I just read Pamuk's book, it was my first written by him. I am a serious coin collector (Balkans) and this book was able to give me a lot of information I needed. Ottoman Empire has ruled Balkans for hundreds of years and there is so much influence in economic terms that sometimes it is very difficult to weed out the reasons why something happened. This book is excellent at pointing at right sources and further reading. It is very readable once you decide to leave out all the footnotes until the end. But something like this is expected from a historic scientific book as opposed to a historic novel, I guess. Nevertheless, if one combines this book with classics by Album and Schaendlinger, one can get a very good picture of the subject at hand. Apart from sometimes tediuos readablity, it is an excellent book. If it had more story-telling oriented text in it, it would have been even better for me, but this is a very personal matter, I guess. Highly recommended!