Most academics do not find writing a popular history very easy. You need a good story line, preferably narrative, and justification by reference notes must be kept to a non-frightening minimum. It helps if your historical subject also resonates with topics of today. Leslie Peirce's Empress of the East meets all these requirements, particularly the last. This book is not only a rags-to-riches story about how a woman of slave origin made the best of the opportunities available to rise to a position of considerable dynastic significance, carving out for herself a new role as Ottoman queen and breaking a number of apparent taboos in the process. In part, it also responds to the excitement created by a recent Turkish television series dramatizing the reign of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman (1520–66) and the human interest story of his romance with Hurrem/Roxelana. But, despite its title, Empress of the East is more than this and, operating within the constraints of the evidence available, will certainly outshine any other attempt to write such a book within the foreseeable future. It is nevertheless not easy to find the right pitch for an academic review.

The book is structured in three sections, each of five chapters. Section 1, “Beginnings”, presents a likely course of events from Roxelana's probable capture in a Tatar slave raid somewhere in the Ukraine at some point in the 1510s, through her purchase for or presentation to the Ottoman imperial household at the Old Palace in Istanbul and her early years as Süleyman's favourite. This is a necessarily speculative, though quite plausible, discussion of her early life. By 1526 Roxelana had acquired a “maverick stature” as the sultan's only concubine and, in contrast to the usual “one mother, one son” policy of the dynasty, was the mother of three sons and a daughter. Section two, “Challenges”, assesses how she attempted to overcome criticism of her apparent hold over Süleyman – attributed by some to witchcraft – by developing a unique role as his consort. This was achieved partly by developing cautious domestic relationships with other significant women surrounding the sultan (especially his mother but also the harem stewardess and the mother of Mustafa, Süleyman's eldest surviving son) and partly by creating a more favourable public persona through establishing in Istanbul her first charitable foundation, the mosque complex known as Haseki (“the favourite”). Occasional comparison between Roxelana's relatively stable position and the insecurities of Henry VIII's wives offers the reader a useful perspective. Section three, “Politics”, depicts Roxelana expanding her public role as charitable benefactress while becoming increasingly anxious about her ageing husband's health, about her sons’ dispersal to provincial governorships, and in the 1550s about the impending succession struggle between Mustafa and her surviving sons Selim and Bayezid. Peirce's careful discussion (pp. 269–79) of the controversy caused by the execution in 1553 of Mustafa at Süleyman's command – which “became the fount of Roxelana's notoriety and the principal reason history has vilified her” (p. 272) – largely exonerates her from direct responsibility and questions the extent of her influence upon the sultan in political matters. A brief epilogue continues the dynastic history after Roxelana's death in 1558, noting how her innovative but controversial role as queen, though not repeated, was indisputably a catalyst in the enhancement of the role of queen mother. In this sense, Empress of the East serves as a prequel to Peirce's ground-breaking The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (1993).

However, Empress of the East is a very different book to the more analytical, institutional history Imperial Harem. It is a life-and-times narrative constructed around one particular individual, although the Roxelana who emerges is still rather a cardboard figure. This is to a large extent inevitable. Apart from an incomplete collection of letters to Süleyman during his absences on campaign and endowment documents in her name, there are few original sources by or specifically about Hurrem Sultan (her Ottoman name). Reports by Venetian and other Western observers may fill some gaps and are regularly used here, but Peirce is well aware that rounding out her character with girlish fears and maternal instincts can only be taken so far. That Hurrem means “joyful” may have been a clue to personality, borne out by phrases in some of her letters, but it is still not very much to go on. Other characters, including Süleyman, appear largely at arm's length and little new material of significance emerges about any of their six children. As the book's underlying theme is the novelty of Roxelana's 38-year position as Süleyman's consort – putatively termed “the reign of Suleyman and Roxelana” (p. 4) – much of the recent research on the wider politics, culture and imagery of Süleyman's era is not directly relevant and is hardly touched upon.

Nevertheless, Peirce offers an authoritative, measured and engaging study which should be highly recommended and widely read. Ottomanists will find it a relaxing read which draws expertly on a lifetime's study of Ottoman women. For non-specialist historians, students and general readers, who are the main target readerships, it will serve as an excellent introduction to sixteenth-century Ottoman court history. The running thread of Roxelana's career is buttressed by contextual digressions which provide a different kind of depth and essential background. These sections include descriptions of what Roxelana “would have seen on her first trip ‘in state’” from the Old Palace to the New through the streets of Istanbul (pp. 46–50), of the layout and functions of the New Palace (pp. 127–38), of the career of the grand vezir Ibrahim Paşa (pp. 150–65), and on the construction and purposes of Roxelana's Haseki foundation (pp. 170–94) and her later complex in Jerusalem (pp. 288–94). Informative and wide-ranging, Empress of the East is one of very few biographies in English of a pre-nineteenth-century Ottoman personality – and the only one on this scale of a woman.