This is one of the best architectural dictionaries that I have found. It has a number of layman terms and quite a few diagrams. It is concise, but contained all of the terms that we have come up with so far.

If you are really interested in what happened between Turks and Armenians in 1915,i can suggest you to read Heath Lowry's The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.Professor Heath Lowry is a well-known historian in Princeton University and in his book,he proves Ambassador Morgenthau's Story wrong scientifically,shows how the book is based on rumors.A must to read for those who are interested in this matter...

The book is advisable only when one reads it with Heath W. Lowry' s "The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau' s Story", published by ISIS Press, Istanbul in 1990. As Dr. Lowry describes:

"The answer is simple and relates to the fact that Morgenthau was writing a piece of wartime propaganda with the expressly stated purpose of mobilising support for President Wilson's war effort. He consciously down played the close relationships he enjoyed with the Young Turk leadership throughout his sojourn in Constantinople and sacrificed truth for the greater good of helping to generate anti-Turkish sentiment which would transform itself into pro-war sentiment."

Unfortunately the American public opinion during that time was based on such sources as the services of Dragaman (translators) between the officials of the Ottoman Empire and the American Ambassador. And these dragaman were not Ottoman Turks but Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Greeks both were in conflict with the Ottoman Empire. Ambassador Morgenthau used two of them, two Armenians, namely Hagop S. Andonian (personal secretary) and Arshag K. Schmavonian (legal assistant). The printed copy however went through severe war time propaganda editing by the US Secretary of State, Robert Lensing and Pulitzer award winning author, Burton J. Hendrick.

One of the most dramatic incidents and the diversion of the facts were about the life insurance benefits of the deceased Armenian insurers of an American Insurance company. The book claims that Talaat, the Ottoman Interior Minister, made a request to him that the Ambassador should help to facilitate payment the insurance benefits to the Ottoman Treasury, as there were no heirs to the insurers! However, Dr. Lowry proved that after reading the actual dated letters, the request of the Ottoman Minister was to stop the American Insurance Company from transferring their capital funds from Ottoman Empire to France, and thereby preserving sufficient capitalization for any benefits claims. Such diversion of the facts is extremely dangerous.

It is therefore an important document about the wartime journalism and subsequent unfortunate diversions of the facts to base Armenian claims of 1915. We could only be grateful to Dr. Lowry that he shed light into the story with his review of the original letters stored in FDR Library and in the National Achieves.

Ambassador Morgenthau has always been one of the most reliable sources on the Armenian Genocide. No surprise that so many attempts have been made to tarnish his image, or to question his testimonies on the terrible crime committed by the Ottoman Empire against its Christian Armenian subjects. Yet, the Morgenthau version of the 1915 events is abslutely irrefutable, and I strongly recommend this book to those interested in finding out what has really happened during the agony of the "ill man of Europe".