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66 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Broadbrush Treatment of Tumultuous Period, December 3, 2005
This review is from: Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors (Hardcover)
The narrative is structured to culminate in three pivotal events which occupied Spain in 1492: the recapture of Spanish territories held by Moors for about 700 years, the expulsion of Jews who refused to convert, and the launching of Columbus' expeditions and subsequent discovery of America. In the process, we witness the creation of the first formidable modern state. Much is devoted to the Inquisition's role in constructing a coherent polity. We get snapshots of Vatican politics, orgiastic cardinals, fiery Dominicans, Spanish sucessional disputes, poisonings, European slave trade, Portuguese adventures, and fifteenth century "scientific" thinking. Mr. Reston has put together a very amusing read and one is not shortchanged if the general topic is of interest and this is all one expects.
Indeed, Mr. Reston aims to write "popular" history, that is, plot, drama and color, emotion, sustained momentum, some intellectual stimulation but not much analysis or interpretation. More often than not he succeeds. But for me, genre success proved to be the book's shortcoming. I wanted more analysis, more probing, more competing interpretations of what now seem to us truly strange events. His point of view is of our day: post-Enlightenment, post-Einstein, post-Holocaust, post-Stalinist, post-Vietnam, post- all horrible events of the twentieth (and twenty-first?) century. To what extent is it proper to apply such prism to events which occurred over five centuries ago, to characters who lived in a world devoid of all knowledge and experience we subsequently acquired? Mr. Reston is not bashful about doing just that, passionately so at times. Perhaps such scruples are not applicable to a book aiming primarily to entertain. He certainly is not bashful in showing his outrage. One never loses awareness that the author has a point of view. What do we learn from it? We are left to draw our own conclusions, arguably with a stacked deck.
On a more sober level, the topic is so ambitious, the history so complex, that the broadbrush treatment accorded here almost reduces everyone and everything to outline or caricature. To be fair, one cannot fault Mr. Reston for not writing the book that one thinks ought to be written. A good by-product is to make us realize how welcomed a more thorough treatment of the period would be. Certainly the Inquisition aspects have been well treated by Henry Kerman and Benzion Netanyahu. But we need more recent treatments in English which discuss Moorish Spain, Christian Spain as welcoming haven for Jews after their expulsion from England and France (and the irony of their subsequent expulsion from Spain itself some centuries later), the fragmentation of the Iberian peninsula and the reunification of Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand, the consolidation and centralization of power in the modern State for which Spain provided the model to be followed by the rest of Europe, Columbus, his voyages, and the rise of European hegemony. There seems to be a "black hole" in available histories from the Visigoths to the Hapbsburgs (excepting Kerman and Netanyahu).
Mr. Reston writes lucidly and well. The book could use genealogical tables, more maps, and more careful editing (some pronouns are hard to trace; the same character is "explained" more than once in the text within relative proximity and without additional information given). None of this is more than a momentary annoyance but should have been corrected.
You will enjoy the book taking it for what it is. If you are intellectually curious, you will probably be pleased but not satisfied. Be aware that it is not the last word on the subject, an opinion with which Mr. Reston would probably agree.
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81 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where are the footnotes?, December 11, 2005
This review is from: Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors (Hardcover)
Notwithstanding prior reviewers' judgments, Reston's history is a travesty. Dogs of War purports to describe the "apocalyptic" consequences of the destruction of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada, the expulsion of practicing Jews from Spain and the discovery of the Americas. Reston attempts to describe the origins and nature of the Inquisition, but in fact does little to clearly or accurately portray its scope and nature. It reads more like a history for middle-schoolers than for grown-ups. Its one merit was that his simplistic and unqualified arguments drove me to find additional sources to check his facts and claims. The contrast between the Dogs of God and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition (1999) could not be starker: Kamen's book is history, Reston's is little more than a well-written polemic. Reston's own admission that "This is not history in the traditional sense..." is perhaps one of the few assertions in the book that can be taken at face value.
One of the most amazing omissions in Reston's book is any effort to actually quantify the numbers of individuals who were victims of the Inquisition. Clearly, a single victim to such an unjust and horrifying tribunal is one too many, but in writing a history it makes sense to introduce some level of proportionality. Reston seems anxious to equate the Inquisition with the Holocaust. Certainly both are examples of rampant and primeval racism, but the equivalency diminishes the singularity of the most horrific crime in human history.
Reston uses no footnotes!! There is no way one can check his sources or his interpretation of those sources. There is little evidence that he seriously examined original sources. I am no expert in this period, but one example may serve to illustrate the weaknesses of Reston's book. His bibliography includes an earlier edition of Kamen's book (1965). Either he read Kamen's book and chose to ignore the arguments therein or he simply didn't bother to read the book. The treatment of the same events is so different that I fear the latter must be the case - since a "knowing" distortion is by far the greater failure. Both Reston (pages 74-75) and Kamen (pages 46-47) relate the same story about one Diego de Susan, an immensely rich Converso (a Christian with Jewish heritage), and his efforts in 1480/1 to form a resistance to the Inquisition that came to his home town of Seville in 1480. Betrayed, apparently by his daughter, Diego de Susan was caught and executed by the Inquisition. Both writers relate essentially the same story, though Kamen provides specific references for his account. Kamen, however, after relating the story notes: "The whole story about the plot and betrayal was in reality a myth: Susan had died before 1479, the plot is undocumented, and there was no daughter Susanna." Reston treats the story as a fact, an indisputable example of the power and force of the Inquisition. (Note: In fairness to Reston, it is possible that the earlier edition did not include the above conclusion. However, it is hard to imagine why one would not reference the latest edition of a book by a professional historian. Moreover, Kamen cites supporting sources that also appear in Reston's bibliography.) Thousands died directly at the hands of the inquisition, tens of thousands sufferend the horrors of having to leave their homes and suffer the grim fate that awaited many travellers in the 15th Century and refugees throughout the ages, a hundred thousand gave up their heritage (Kamen's estimates). This is a tragedy that is worth telling and re-telling, lest we allow it to happen again. Unfortunately Reston's approach does not do it justice.
Why write a book that is so incomplete and so flawed? Perhaps the answer lies in Mr. Reston's politics. His Prologue suggests that America was in some sense borne out of the crimes and excesses of the Spanish Inquisition and the triumph of Christianity over Islam in the re-conquest of Granada. And, moreover, that we, as Americans, should be more mindful of these origins and more understanding of the continued hostility of Muslims to their treatment by the Spanish in 1492! Unfortunately, Mr. Reston's bad history simplistically and inappropriately legitimizes today's terrorism in Madrid's Railway Station.
By all means read the book, but have some real histories on hand to provide the facts and perspective.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Read with a grain of salt - or other spices..., August 27, 2007
This book is nicely written - compelling enough to keep one turning the pages. If one reads it as a work of historical fiction, the this book is quite enjoyable.
I'm no historian (that's why I purchased the book, after all), but I immediately sensed the author's factual transgressions and wayward perspectives. One need not be an historian, however, to note the one-sidedness here. I couldn't think of a concise way to sum up these shortcomings; and then I read the previous reviews: Journalist.
So what we have here is not a thoroughly researched, thought out, analytical account of an historical event. Then again, should one expect such writing from a journalist? William Shirer (Rise & Fall of the 3rd Reich)set the bar pretty high. He did have an advantage - having lived through the historical event in his book. So, I'm willing to cut Reston some slack. But without setting the bar as high as Shirer, Reston still falls far short of my humble standard for history books.
Would recommend the book. But don't go around quoting it among history scholars - unless, that is, you want to be confused by the facts.
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