Book excerpt: The Turkic world can now count some 140 million people worldwide. Turkic-speaking peoples range from ancient populations in Siberia and China, through six states in an arc through central Eurasia to fast-growing new settler communities in western Europe and America. Yet, despite an extraordinary past and strong signs of hope for the future, they remain some of the least studied peoples in the world. Muslims for the most part, they offer readiness to work with the West, access to the new Caspian Sea oil province, and a secular alternative for an Islamic world caught between pressure for change and the reactionary threat of fundamentalism. The most powerful and best-established Turkic nation, Turkey, long hemmed in by its role as a front-line pillar of NATO, has become the most democratic major Muslim country and is now negotiating for full membership of the European Union. After a shaky start, the five Turkic states of the Caucasus and Central Asia set free by the end of the Cold War-Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic-are making an independent-minded comeback too. In his major new work, Wall Street Journal correspondent Hugh Pope provides a vivid picture of the descendants of the nomad armies who once conquered China and the Byzantine Empire. He shows the myriad connections that live on between Turks in the Xinjiang province of western China (one of that country's few remaining bastions of rebellion), through Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, the Netherlands, Germany (where Turkish can be heard on every other street corner of Berlin), and all the way to the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. Along the way he reassesses a history in which Islamic lands were ruled by Turkic dynasties-before their ascendancy was broken by the rising power of Europe, Russia, and China-among them the Moguls, who conquered India, the Safavids, who laid the foundations of modern Iran, and the Ottomans, whose five-century-long empire encompassed Turkey, the Balkans, and the Middle East. One of the world's foremost experts on Turkey-and coauthor of the acclaimed Turkey Unveiled (a New York Times Notable Book)-Hugh Pope has crisscrossed this wider Turkic world to encounter and assimilate the many facets of this diverse, fascinating, and ambitious ethnic group. He distills their essential genius, shows a new convergence in language and governance, and argues that the basis has been laid for a commercial and cultural solidarity unthinkable before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rich with stories and legends stretching back centuries-from the military legacy of nomad raiders under Attila the Hun to the era of the Great Game and beyond-Sons of the Conquerors is a compellingly readable account of a long-neglected subject. It brings readers into closer contact with a culture that has shaped history and opens a refreshing new window on the Islamic world. Book jacket.