`Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds,' by Stephen Kinzer; Farrar, Straus & Giroux (252 pages, $25).

Byline: Carlin Romano

Americans don't talk Turkey very much.

Unlike Germans, whose diverse country now includes many young ethnic Turks born to "guest workers," we lack a significant Turkish minority. Unlike Europeans, who wondered for centuries, as Stephen Kinzer writes, "whether the Ottomans would sweep into Paris and claim the entire continent for Islam," Americans never experienced the Ottoman Empire, or its successor, the Republic of Turkey, as a threat on our doorstep.

For well-heeled Americans, Turkey flickers on the periphery of consciousness as an exotic place to visit when they've already experienced Greece and its "Captain Corelli" islands, and still need a classical fix. For Americans inclined to stash illegal substances as they gallivant around the world, it's known as a "very bad place to get busted (see "Midnight Express," Hollywood's all-time most effective antidrug movie.) For the Bush …