Brideshead Revisited

As editor, I'm proud to say that TKR has been fecund of late. Its contributors have been working hard at penning new reviews and the results are there for the readers to enjoy. Perhaps it's the spirit of Christmas in the air... Anyway, here is a review of mine on Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, which admittedly doesn't interact with the book itself much at all. - RD

In a novel, propositions are not stated. Generalized, abstract truths are not explicated. If they are, they come as part of the story or in dialogue. They appear through the concrete and discrete images, characters, events and reflections that occur during the course of the narrative – rather as light appears in the cracks of a thatched basket when held up to the sunlight. A reviewer can call into question the ideational foundation from which the author writes and the conclusions reached, but can he or she truly criticize the narrative – in other words, the “artifice” of the novel – itself? How should he or she approach the task of criticizing the novel’s “agenda” if that agenda appears in the actions of the characters, especially when there are diverse crosscurrents in the behaviors and thoughts of those characters, such that flat statements describing the author’s purpose are difficult to justify? Finally, in what sense can a reviewer sum up the book’s theme, when abstracting a sublime “meaning” from the book only serves to contort the very particularity which made the book an enjoyable work of art in the first place? It is to these questions that my mind turns as I contemplate writing a review of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

Beauty cannot long live detached from a particular object, place or time. When we label a novel a “classic,” it is not merely because it provides a perceptive social commentary, that it presents an ingenious new philosophy, or even that it contributes to the “great conversation” concerning human life, held throughout the ages. In a simple sense, a classic novel – and any classic work of art, for that matter – is termed so because it possesses a quality of beauty, of craftsmanship and excellence, unparalleled among its contemporaries and, potentially, its progenitors and successors. Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, though one of his signature achievements, is more of a modern classic; reaching the upper echelon of “classic” classics is the job of a much more important book. Nevertheless, as I think back on Waugh’s book, it does have a certain quality of beauty in it that is hard to duplicate and is not often seen in more recent material.

Waugh is known to be a critic of the modern society, or one where civic life and culture is stripped of its religious content. He knows that this type of society is devoid of the deeper qualities of life – those that make it worth living. His main character, Charles Ryder, is also the narrator and the reader gets the impression that he is not happy with his atheistic inclinations. He watches with caustic wit as his friends, the Flytes, make often ridiculous gestures in order to live out their Catholic convictions. But by the end, he also notices a certain beauty and meaning lacking in his own life.

This is but one theme that caught my attention. Waugh employs many others, including romance, war, friendship, the early-20th century English class system, and the Arcadian quality of youth that we invent for our memories as we grow older. Some of these are worked out more fully and interestingly than others. The plot (which is guaranteed to bore or irritate its audiences come next year’s theatrical release – I could write a whole review on the unsuitability of this book for film) is merely a mechanism for the characters to interact and for the narrator to muse. But the wizardry of Waugh’s pen is what I found most engaging about the book. The publisher’s blurb on the author included a quote declaring his work to be lapidary. That is a fitting term. Waugh writes incisively but also beautifully – evoking images that stir the mind and the heart. He is also quite humorous; I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions. Paradoxically, his brevity often produces a more fully developed image than would a prolix account. Perhaps this is due to his very English prose, with its precision that far exceeds many of Waugh’s American contemporaries.

Returning to the questions I posed at the beginning, should I judge the book based on its themes or its art? This is a perennial question and one that I bring up not to answer but to consider. I enjoyed reading Waugh and listening to the narrator and characters interact. This book comports well with those who enjoy the art(ifice) of literature. Those who read it for plot intrigue or who try to mine it for underlying philosophical breakthroughs may come away a bit disappointed. Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that his themes are still relevant today, more than sixty years after the novel was written.

- Roger Dixon

The Vicissitudes of Vietnam

Jake submits his new review (Library of America's Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1975) with the caveat that it may be a bit acerbic. Let the reader be the judge. I for one am happy to publish an article that comments on the recent war from a slightly different angle. The political brouhaha over Iraq is nearing senescence. - RD

Armchair politicians regularly compare Iraq with Vietnam. But how does one evaluate their opinions? The Library of America has collected the most memorable Vietnam journalism and memoirs into two nicely bound volumes, numbering at nearly a 1000 pages. I was initially daunted by such a task, but each page was so engrossing that I only needed 4 very late nights coupled with the requisite cups of coffee to conquer this Everest.

Even the most dilatory of pupils who meanders through any of America’s “Every Child Pushed Through” schools has a vague semblance of Vietnam’s disaster. Johnson’s stubborn belief that winning this war was the key to winning the war against the spread of communism, while only commissioning a small portion of America’s forces, resulted in a lose-lose situation. The army’s morale was truncated if not decapitated and some soldiers estimated that 85% of our military spent most of their days smoking marijuana, simply trying to pass the time in order to avoid conflict. After all, they reasoned, why risk their life for a pointless war?

The collection vivifies one pulse that ran through late 20th century American blood. Thus the careful reader, taking time to peruse these Vietnam writers discovers a key sentiment. Allow me to illustrate with the lyrics of a famous Vietnam song:

Spray the town and kill the people
Drop your napalm in the square;
Take off early in the morning,
Get them while they’re still at prayer.
Drop some candy to the orphans,
Watch them as they gather round;
Use your 20 millimeter,
Mow the little bitches down.
Spray the town and kill the people,
Get them with your poison gas;
Watch them throwing up their breakfasts
As you make your second pass.
Hungry, skinny, starving people,
Isn’t killing harvests nice?

Or the story of Lt. William L. Calley, accused of massacring 109 civilians – much like the flashbacks of Dolph Lungren in Universal Soldier. He would enter a town, line up the orphans and widows and proceed to slaughter them. Even more horrifying is that he was accompanied by a regiment that I dubbed the Merry Harikari band, together singing the jolly Vietnam song.

But unfortunately this concerto consisted of several movements on both sides of the Pacific. After the anti-Vietnam demonstrations at Kent State, one American mother wrote “Congratulations to the Guardsman for their performance of duty (killing several demonstrators) on the Kent University Campus. I hope these actions serve as an example for the entire nation. The governors of our states cannot waste the taxpayers’ money playing games.” She sang soprano.

In short, one skein of the Vietnam War is anger and frustration. Although there are stories that would make even the most cynical American proud, such as McCain’s firsthand account of torture in a POW camp, the end result is rueful and embarrassing. Americans barely escaped from the embassy while abandoning the Vietnamese they promised asylum. It was a dark chapter of America’s history that our president was able to avoid; fortunately his braggadocio in never reading the newspapers probably means that he never commiserated with the Vietnam struggle. Christopher Walken’s performance in The Deer Hunter sums it up well. Hopefully he watches movies.

- Jake McCarty

Honest Abe and All That

I'm happy to say that we have a new contributor, Charles Huff. Charles is a friend of Jake's and has written a trenchant review of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. - RD

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a historian famed for her Pulitzer-prize winning No Ordinary Time, delivers a new biography of Abraham Lincoln. In contrast to some other recent Lincoln biographies, Goodwin treats her subject in a traditional fashion, focusing on Lincoln’s statesmanship rather than his sexuality or depression. Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s genius by comparing his life to the lives of three of his contemporaries, who were the backbone of his first cabinet. William H. Seward, his Secretary of State, Salmon P. Chase, his Secretary of Treasury, and Edward Bates, his Attorney General, were all strong candidates for the Republican nomination the year Lincoln won. Goodwin argues that though brilliant, willful men surrounded Lincoln, he knew his own mind. His genius rests not in the fact that he surrounded himself with good men, but that his will was the rudder of his august and divided cabinet.

As Goodwin begins the intertwined tale of these four men, she advances with a style reminiscent of a John Grisham novel. Though we know Lincoln will win the nomination and head to the White House, the steps along the way are fraught with tension. When the four men finally converge at the White House at the start of the Civil War, Goodwin gets down to business. She defines the relationships between the men, confirms the foreshadowing of their temperaments, and displays the genius of Lincoln. From this point on, she focuses on Lincoln’s decisions during the war and his apt handling of his turbulent cabinet.

There are some drawbacks to Goodwin’s method. As she builds her case, she seems to repeat herself overmuch, sometimes using the same anecdote more than once. As she tries to prove Lincoln’s genius, she sometimes seems unfair to the people around him. She is kind to those that support him, and caustic to those who do not.

Overall Goodwin’s work is worth reading. She accomplishes her goal. She shows the honesty and shrewdness that led the anecdotal prairie lawyer to firmness of decision and a superior knowledge of men and the times. Goodwin’s love of Lincoln is infectious, and while she handles her characters in light of her reverence for Lincoln, she does not make them straw men. She makes one appreciate the genius of Seward and Stanton as well as Lincoln. I highly recommend the book.

- Charles Huff

The Ultimate Christmas Present

While not considered "books" in the truest sense of the word, Visual Education's flashcard sets can provide the user with hours of wintertime entertainment beside the hearth. Jake has contributed a salient review on Vis Ed's most versatile set. - RD

The Blank Cards (1000 – Count, 3 ½ x 1 ½) by Visual Education are one of the most important pedagogical tools for all those interested in learning ancient languages. Because learning languages requires repetition and memorization, these flashcards are the conduits of such a worthy enterprise.

For those of you familiar with Visual Education’s German, French, Greek, Hebrew, et al… flashcards, you will know what to expect. The cards are small enough to carry around comfortably, but large enough to record important information. The cards are made of a lightweight cardboard that is neither too stiff nor too flexible. The printers at Visual Education have mastered the oh-so-difficult technique of creating flashcards amenable to the hand’s palette.

Predictably, Blank Cards are blank. In other words, you will be able to write any information you wish to learn upon these diadems. I prefer to create Hebrew, German, Akkadian, and Ugaritic flashcards, while my wife prefers to inscribe Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Greek upon these gems.

The only minor cavil I have with these cards is that their borders are a bit sharp. Cycling through several hundred cards each day creates minor paper cuts that ultimately develop into small calluses. Nevertheless, they are an excellent investment to all those interested in learning languages—and a cheap one at that—only $5.95.

- Jake McCarty

The Scarlet Thread of Egypt: Two Views on the Pre-Dynastic

Jake submitted this review awhile ago, but editorial negligence obstructed a speedy street date. In it, our historian par excellence looks at the conclusions of two archaeologists on the subject of pre-Pharaonic Egyptian culture. - RD

What is the scarlet thread of Egyptian culture? Is it the hierarchical structure exemplified by monumental tomb projects that demarcate the king from peon and rich from poor? Or is the centralized bureaucracy, where goods and services filtered into the state? This is precisely what Midant-Reynes, the great French Egyptologist, and Katerine Bard, her American counterpart, spar over. They examine the Egyptian culture(s) that antedate the rise of Pharaonic civilization (ca 3000-200 BCE) in order to locate the nascent trends that adumbrate later Pharaonic civilization. Midant-Reynes looks for hierarchy and Bard looks for centralized bureaucracy.

Midant-Reynes examines tomb excavations of the Naqada culture in order to identify wealth striation and iconography that foreshadow the hierarchy of the later pharaonic civilization. She draws attention to the early tombs filled with artifacts and painted with warrior themes and suggests that “a group of hunter-warriors [were] already invested with an aura of power” (Shaw 49). She contrasts this with the Maadian culture to show how their culture was primarily pastoral-agricultural with very little social stratification, and were thus replaced by the hierarchical Naqada culture.

The arguments of Midant-Reynes are delimited by her search for social stratification. She correctly appropriates the work of Petrie and Kaiser on horizontal cemetery accumulation, but she does not utilize enough recent data. Her treatment is too one-sided and even quixotic because she focuses only on what she considers to be the seed of pharaonic civilization: hierarchy. She neglects the mundane process of cultural change; she does not look at city plans, including walls, especially as they relate to warfare and sacred space; and she fails to interact with Egyptian artifacts found in neighboring countries.

Bard’s article is a more robust treatment of Predynastic culture with a far more subtle definition of pharaonic civilization: complex societies and centralized bureaucracy. She briefly highlights several of the major tomb excavations and shows how grave artifacts indicate far more than social status, but also trade patterns, industry, and technology. She then interprets this data under the rubric of an emergent centralized bureaucracy.

Although Bard surveys most of the relevant research, she only flirts with the definition of complex societies. This becomes a problem if a complex society, defined as a village, could not produce everything necessary for cultural survival. One could argue that the Naqada culture, by itself, was a complex society because of its pottery exportation. She also neglects the role of walls and how walls circumscribed Egyptian society. If sacred space constituted a core element of ancient Egyptian identity, then it requires perusal. Changes to the intellectual landscape of ancient Egypt may result.

Midant-Reyes and Bard both ultimately search for the seeds of pharaonic civilization: Midant-Reynes looks for hierarchy and Bard looks for a complex society and centralized bureaucracy. But they miss the flora and fauna of ancient Egypt. They are both conversant with recent archaeological excavations to the degree to which the archaeology supports their idea of what constitutes the core element of pharaonic civilization.

- Jake McCarty

America for the Ages

For the record, unless I have something interesting to say, I will normally submit my own pieces sans-preface. But since I've already got this one going... As promised, here is my review of Paul Johnson's A History of the American People, which I wrote at 32,000 feet above the shores of Baja California. - RD

Four centuries of Western influence in North America have seen the development of a remarkable civilization. Throughout the years, those within and without the American project have written vast commentaries on the United States according to what they see as its defining qualities, good or evil. Paul Johnson, in his A History of the American People (HarperCollins, 1996), endeavors to do the same, albeit with the admission that America’s history is both contradictory and difficult.

His task has produced a hefty volume (over 1,000 pages, including extensive footnotes) that successfully treads the line between anecdote and sweeping narrative. Johnson, an English citizen, has done his homework. He provides a fresh outsider’s look at many events that Americans often overlook as grade school fare. See especially the discussions on the Boston Tea Party, the career of Andrew Jackson and Nixon’s decline. But perhaps the most gripping aspect of the book is its author’s knack for finding rare, idiosyncratic quotations from some of America’s best well known figures. These gems range from the astonishingly harsh: “For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief” (John Adams on Thomas Paine); to the infelicitous: “God is killing mainline Protestantism in America and we goddam deserve it” (Stanley Hauerwas); to the humorous: “Their signs say make love not war, but they didn’t look as if they could do either” (Ronald Reagan); to the mischievous: “If all the girls at a Yale prom were laid end-to-end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised” (Dorothy Parker).

Johnson is nothing if not opinionated. But far from detracting from his work, this feature endears him to the reader, for his judgments are almost always well-balanced, thoughtful and possessed of a strong sense of justice. He is without doubt a conservative, both socially and politically. But he defies the label of “ideologue,” that most pernicious insult among modern political pundits. He does so by adhering strictly to his sense of morality and justice, with special attention to the have-nots. Many great American heroes and programs fail to retain a clean bill of health under the assiduousness with which he wields his moral stethoscope. For example, Johnson skewers FDR, JFK and Prohibition. (In regard to the lattermost, I must admit to a gleeful sense of Schadenfreude.) Only a select few, such as Lincoln, Truman and NATO, escape unmolested. But he is also a realist, acknowledging that men ruthless and indulgent in their personal lives have often proved to be outstanding leaders.

This volume greatly enhances one’s knowledge of American history and draws the many facets of that history into a coherent whole. That whole is, notwithstanding certain episodes to the contrary (e.g. slavery, pervasive Indian slaughter, etc.), rather a positive one. In Johnson’s eyes, America is the place where injustice is answered and overcome, where the individual holds his or her head high, where intentions and results coincide, where hope treads upon despair. In light of the disrepute into which America has fallen of late, many would do well to read this book. It serves as a corrective to the myth of imperialism that virulent anti-Americanism, at home and abroad, proffers. It also has the merit of being a delightful read, which is no small feat.

- Roger Dixon

World War II from its Contemporaries

Here is a review of the Library of America volume Reporting World War II: American Journalism, 1938-1946. Jake, infamous for his piquant studies on ancient near eastern culture and literature, has about-faced with his submission of this welcome piece. He is steadily churning out reviews (4 to my 1) on TKR, and puts us all to shame. Forthcoming is my own review of Paul Johnson's A History of the American People. - RD

War costs amount to lost husbands, missing body parts, and addled minds. But when books and movies attempt to recast these atrocities, their narrations are stained by the knowledge of later resolution. This collection of World War 2 American journalism, however, paints with deeper hues of grimness and more vivid impressions of reality because the outcome of the war is unknown.

The Library of America has collected many of the best (though I lament the inclusion of Gertrude Stein) eyewitness accounts of World War 2. It predictably begins with scathing editorials about Chamberlin and finishes with the Japanese surrender. And it includes all the stuff in betwixt. Although these events are facts known to any elementary student, the first-hand tales of intrigue, vice and mayhem are told by participants on a day-to-day basis. The Americans who became Nazis, the racial violence in the American military, and the army’s deleterious crawl through the mountains of Italy are described by those who saw the events transpire and by those who were uncertain about the future outcome of their prodigious struggle.

How then does one understand World War II? I invite you to allow the yarns of the participants lead you onto the gothic path of uncertainty. You will see that narrations ignorant to the end of the story paint onto canvases not found on the silver screen. And they are more engrossing too.

- Jake McCarty

Huehnergard's Akkadian Grammar

After a long wait, we have finally secured the rights to Jake's newest review. An appalling lack of reader response to matters of the ancient near east may indicate that people are ready for a change of pace. I'm working on an American History book and a large novel, but won't be ready with a review for several weeks. If anyone else has a good review, please submit it and I'll post it. - RD

The recent reprinting of John Huehnergard’s grammar (A Grammar of Akkadian, Harvard Semitic Studies #45) on September 2, 2005 is a great boon to all those interested in history. Mesopotamia, the cradle of human civilization, was where writing was not only developed—but where literature flourished. And this is precisely why Huhnergard’s grammar is so important: 60% of the history of writing is written in Akkadian and surely any student with a modicum of interest in history would be unsatisfied with such a small access to the history of literature.

For those of you who already own previous editions there are some serious changes that probably require an upgrade. Many of the Cuneiform signs are changed in the Old Babylonian cursive script. The recent discoveries and decipherments have improved Assyriologist’s understanding of their Schriftlehre and the exercises have been tightened to better facilitate the acquisition of this most important (and most neglected) language. Furthermore, the presentation of some grammar rules is a bit more habile, a feature that any student will appreciate.

The sad reality of this monumental publication is that the language is probably too difficult to master for most people: it requires discipline, curiosity, and intelligence—a feature sadly lost in the musth of today’s universities. One hopes that this recent publication will function as an all too needed groyne to prevent the erosion of America’s intellect and that its next imprinting isn’t taken to a samizdat.

- Jake McCarty

Gennarelli's Folly

Due to the vibrant reader response we had from Jake's last review, the editorial board has requested and received another dazzling gem. Jake has quickly risen to the position of most favored reviewer, although it cannot be said that he has had much competition... - RD

The essay by C. H. E. Carmichael, in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1874; 300-4), outlines Gennarelli’s theory on an early race of “red-men” in Egypt, Europe, and beyond. Although he marshals a fair amount of data, his argument is ultimately unconvincing.

Perhaps Gennarelli’s greatest weakness is his failure to understand art. Rather than attempting to understand how a red hue represented ancient Egyptian thought, he suggests that their artistic style was simply designed to mimic reality. Art, however, is more than a simple photograph, but how one sees and interprets an image. He fails to provide a cursory explanation of art and its relationship to perceived and actual reality. By analogy, one could argue that Egyptian torsos were naturally rotated and that moving their appendages was a difficult enterprise, and that men with giant square-shaped heads lived on Easter Island! Gennarelli’s failure to appreciate the subtleness of art leads him to the conclusion that Egyptian art was simply a conventional practice designed to mimic reality like banal photography.

He supports this argument by observing the artistic representations of prehistoric races, and how the red-man motif is present in Europe (and not Asia), which could have only come from Egypt. However, his parallels are inadequate. The bronze figures found in the district of Motecchio could not have indicated the color of the figurines skin, and using several disparate bas-reliefs still suffers from the same shortcomings of his interpretation (or lack thereof) of art. One need only find an ancient example of artwork that depicts an individual in any color other than red to vitiate his argument. Furthermore, one wonders why he didn’t cull from early Christian iconography, where Jesus is often painted with a reddish hue (cf. The Dark Church in Cappadocia, Turkey).

After making the claim that Egypt was the cradle of European civilization, he then argues that southern Arabia (Yemen) was the cradle of Egyptian civilization because its name means red (hemiar). Using locations and tribal names as a description of its inhabitants is unconvincing because one could find a variety of reasons for these red city epithets (a tribe that conquered others by blood, the color of the sand, a type of indigenous bird, etc.). Gennarelli makes the same presupposition as he did earlier because he presupposes that the names of tribes and locations depict people and areas as a photograph would. Lastly, recent archaeological discoveries suggest that people came from further north (Ethiopia) before settling in the southern Arabian Peninsula.

After making these sweeping conclusions, Gennarelli then suggests that Egyptian history was the backbone of North/Central American history because of Mayan pyramids, Native American hieroglyphic languages, and even a so-called Nile region in Guatemala. He adduces every parallel he can muster, yet proves nothing. Several cultures have had common customs with no contact: Cultures often evolve similarly because they are subject to the same harsh realities of life, because they are still dependent on the whims of nature, and because they share many of the same human instincts. Simply because one adduces a parallel says nothing about actual evidence.

While I always enjoy speculation, I rarely find it convincing. Gennarelli’s suggestion, with its many holes, is unconvincing speculation of the first order. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of his thesis is its reminder to interpret art with an appreciation for artistic style and convention. One can only hope that historians in the coming millennia do not employ Gennarelli’s methodology by using Picasso as their touchstone for our generation.

- Jake McCarty

Ugaritische Grammatik

Happily, our own Jake McCarty took my advice and has submitted some thoughts on Dennis Pardee's review of Josef Tropper's Ugaritische Grammatik. Jake assures me that this should be of interest to the general reader. Enjoy. - RD

Brief thoughts on Pardee’s review (Inhaltsverzeichnis Band 50 (2003/2004)) of Tropper’s Ugaritische Grammatik (AOAT 273).

Dennis Pardee’s recent 400 page review of Josef Tropper’s Ugaritische Grammatik has set a new standard for book reviews. Pardee, Professor of Northwest Semitics at The University of Chicago, is perhaps the only American savant who has devoted the bulk of his time to the study of Ugaritology. (Or so M. Smith argues in Untold Stories.) This lacuna is unfortunate because the Ras Shamra corpus is the most significant parallel—or context—to the Hebrew Bible.

Context, accordingly, is the keystone for both Tropper and Pardee. Tropper uses every extant text to build his case and Pardee argues that the task is too large and one-sided. Because there is such a paucity of data, Pardee notes that for a grammar to be so exhaustive it must have dealt thoroughly with every text--an impossible feat. Furthermore, problems in paleography have not been mitigated even though Tropper makes a Herculean attempt at enumerating the Schriftlehre of Ugaritic. How can one really translate hepatic and iatrogenic texts when one cannot read the letters? Pardee wryly suggests that Tropper may be playing a bit of lansquenet with the occasional calque.

I think Pardee is correct, (though he has put Tropper on the cucking-stool). Nevertheless, no serious Biblical student can afford to be without Ugaritische Grammatik in the coming generations. Tropper is a vade mecum though its publication may have been a bit jejune.

- Jake McCarty

The Fourth Crusade

I just finished The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople by Jonathan Phillips. The interesting thing about this book is that Phillips digs deep into contemporary documents and finds that much modern criticism of the crusades is ill-informed. The crusaders may not have been crude barbarians who massacred the refined Muslim community (or in this case, the refined and exquisite Byzantine empire). Instead, Phillips shows that the crusaders were inspired to take up the cross primarily on account of their religious convictions.

In the case of the Fourth Crusade, what everybody considers to be the greatest debacle of the later middle ages, Phillips paints a fully-orbed picture of the reasoning, moral justifications and pressures that led up to the crusader's attack on the greatest Christian city of the age. From my reading, it seems that bad planning, unfortunate circumstances, and a persistent sense of chivalry were the main factors in the decision to move the crusade to Constantinople. Some would say that greed was also a primary motivator, but after reading Phillips, it seems to be ancillary. Greed apparently took over once the expedition went sour, no other options were beckoning and the glitz of Byzantium mocked the crusaders from across the Golden Horn waterway. But prior to this, the main concern was always to save the Holy Land from the Muslims.

Of course, the decision to take back land at the expense of the lives of those living there is not easily justifiable, if it ever is. But by removing the cyncism that surrounds most modern interpretations of the event, Phillips helps the reader to get inside the crusaders' heads, so to speak, and to see them as human beings. This is beneficial because so much rhetoric about the current war in Iraq revolves around the West's historic beating-up of the East. If we can cast both sides in equal lighting (indeed, Islam settled in Jersusalem only after overthrowing the original occupants), the strength of these condemnations will wither and a clearer picture will emerge.

On a stylistic note, Phillips has a flowing prose that enlivens the text with sometimes over-the-top imagery (witness the line pulled for the back of the paperback edition: "The crusaders spread in to the city like a deadly virus running through the veins of an old man"). I liked how he exploited incidental details of life and warfare by turning them into full paragraphs on the subjects. This gave the reader a good sense of how life was lived and what tools humans had to work with (psychologically as well as physically) during the period. And of course, the tactical discussions are engrossing - especially when the reader considers that a force of 20,000 sacked a city of 500,000. And also impressive: the ingenuity of Doge Dandolo, who was not especially revered by the papacy or anyone else not from Venice or on the crusade itself.

Best for me, I now have a sufficient background on the crusade to read some other fun and related books, like Eco's Baudolino or Lawhead's The Celtic Crusades trilogy, and understand the enormity of the crusade's impact. Other recommendations here are always welcome.

This is the christening entry, and as a standard, not all entries have to be this long or serious (by serious I mean formal, not necessarily intellectually high-octane). Or they can be longer and more serious. Whichever works.

- Roger Dixon