This is the story of two American schools in Istanbul –Robert College and American College for Girls– both of them founded in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The story takes the two schools through the last half-century of the Ottoman Empire and the first half-century of the Turkish Republic. The last part of the book tells the story of the founding of Boğaziçi University on the campus of the old Robert College in Bebek-Rumeli Hisar, and the establishment of the new co-educational Robert College on the campus of the old American College for Girls in Arnavutköy. The principal characters in the story are the men and women who worked at the two colleges as teachers and administrators, and the students who studied there, many of them going on to distinguished careers, including two prime ministers of Turkey and two of Bulgaria. Boğaziçi University and the new Robert College, both founded in 1971, continued a tradition that has now linked east and west for over a century, perpetuating bonds of culture and friendship that have endured through wars and the fall and rise of nations.