Primo Levi, Argon - Centro Primo Levi New York

Not all of them where materially inert, for that was not granted to them. On the contrary, they were, or had to be, quite active; but inert they undoubtedly were in the innermost selves, inclined to disinterested speculation … the events attributed to them …shared a static quality, an attitude of dignified abstention, of deliberate (or accepted) relegation to the margins of the great river of life. Primo Levi, Argon

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August 11, 2026
Music Room

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since 1966, when designers at Letraset and James Mosley, the librarian at St Bride Printing Library in London,…

Music Room dummy post

August 11, 2026
Music Room

Music Room dummy post

August 11, 2026
Music Room

Music Room dummy post

August 11, 2026
Music Room

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August 11, 2026
Textile and Carpets

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August 11, 2026
Textile and Carpets

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August 11, 2026
Textile and Carpets

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August 10, 2026
Textile and Carpets

Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine

June 22, 2026
Culture, New scholarship

Mostafa Hussein, Princeton University Press, 2025 In the decades before the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948, native and immigrant Jews in Palestine mediated between Jewish and Arab cultures while navigating their evolving identities as settler colonists. Hebrew Orientalism challenges the…

Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands

June 22, 2026
Culture, Empire, New scholarship

Helen Pfeifer, Princeton University Press, 2022 Historians have typically linked Ottoman imperial cohesion in the sixteenth century to the bureaucracy or the sultan’s court. In Empire of Salons, Helen Pfeifer points instead to a critical but overlooked factor: gentlemanly salons. Pfeifer…

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The Ottoman Catalogue is a curated section of our Bookstore featuring English-language classics and new scholarship on Ottoman history and culture. It explores the impact of nationalism on the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of its decline and dissolution for Europe, and the histories of peoples, lands, religions, and their books before the concept of “the Middle East” emerged as a political and geographical term.

Following two decades of research, programming, and publishing on the history of nationalism, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, Centro Primo Levi moved its attention to the period before 1922, exploring the stories, ideas, exchanges, and transformations that occurred over six centuries of Ottoman rule.

The era that ushered in the rise of the workers movement, totalitarianiasm, the Spanish Civil War, the fall of three empires, the shaping of modern nation-states, and the establishment of an economy based on industrial and scientific growth, banking, and warfare, also brought to an end cultures, concepts of time, language, and rituals that today’s observers often struggle to appreciate.

Much of this history has attracted modest attention from American and English-language scholarship. However, over the past few years, there has been an increase in original and translated research and publications, showcasing this period from various angles and perspectives. As the “Middle East” storms into our societies, challenging the vocabulary of public life, as well as its ethical and epistemological paradigms, we feel that attempting to move our gaze back into this past may help us refine our sensibility and interpretational tools.