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Title: Crescent and Cross : The Battle of Lepanto 1571 by Hugh Bicheno ISBN: 0-304-36319-7 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A lively but deeply researched history
Comment: This is far more than a history of a particular battle. Bicheno devotes the first 248 pages of his book to setting the political and military stage, including previous conflicts between European Christians and Ottoman Turks. The actual clash of fleets at Lepanto takes up less than thirty pages. Nonetheless, this book is a lively read. Bicheno has ranged widely in his research, touching on everything from religious attitudes to fortress design. And he knows how to tell a story, or in this case many stories. The book includes color and black and white plates, plus some diagrams. Three appendices provide details.
Rating: 2
Summary: Lepanto 101
Comment: As a historian currently writing on Lepanto, I read with interest Bicheno's treatment, which seeks to introduce a popular audience to one of the more interesting east-west struggles. The previous reviewer--ciao, Venezia!--is correct in pointing out that history is most reliably told by specialist academics who immerse themselves in dry detail and clearly our Venetian reviewer friend takes legitimate issue with the less-than-scholarly course Bicheno charts. However, there is another role of the historian, it seems to me, that Bicheno performs quite well: that of storyteller. Bicheno, unlike Agnus Konstam (whom our Venetian friend cites as well) has read a wide range of Lepanto secondary literature (and unlike Konstam, he seems per his bibliography to have read widely in other languages, where most of worth is to be found on the subject). Bicheno admirably concerns himself with more than the mere Oct 7strategic decisions and military aspects of the battle--he cautiously dips his toe into the artistic and cultural aspects of the battle. Bicheno's bibliography reflects, if not a specialist historian's focus or insight, an admirable synthesis of the broader implications of Lepanto that Bicheno might not understand as well as he does the military play-by-play but nonetheless fearlessly addresses. (ie the labryntine Counter-Reformation religious context; lepanto's impact on art--Vasari, Veronese, Titian, just to name a few of the guys with brushes...) For the military enthusiast, Angus Konstam's book, with its computer reconstructions and illustrations, is a quick and visually-compelling introduction to the battle scene. Bicheno tries to take the topic a bit further than Konstam, with some success and some limitations. Both authors are, it is worth noting, responding to the new efflorescence of interest in East-West struggles, filling the vaccuum of Lepanto in Anglophonic hands--Lepanto has not been of much interest to Anglophonic historians except for King James who wrote a poem about it in the 1580s (Bicheno gets it wrong that the poem is lost. It was published in 1603 and was used politically to tout the King's talents with the pen... ) Lord Chesterton of course waxed rhapsodic on the battle, using it for his own Catholic agenda...and the dulcit Ian Fenlon, who is I believe a musicologist at Cambridge or Oxford, made dents in my seat at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice before my time and had a thing for motets involving Turks, artistic celebration and the sublime harmonics of Palestrina...) Anyway, Bicheno's is not a historian's history, but as a well-turned overview, I think its a good and timely introduction.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hugh Bicheno is a new and rising talent
Comment: I want to correct the inaccurate view given by the reader from Venice. This book is not written by an amateur, but by a gifted historian who has been receiving widespread acclaim in Europe. He is one of the authors of the Oxford Companion to Military History. Britain's "Sunday Telegraph", probably the most conservative of the national newspapers, claims that Bicheno "has all the right qualifications", and that this is "a wide-ranging and constantly engaging book, written under the pressure of real intellectual enthusiasm". Normam Stone, historian, reviewer and Professor of International Relations in Turkey, says that "if you wish to have a very readable and knowledgeable account of the many sides to [this sixtenth century world], Hugh Bicheno's book is the right start".
I openly confess that I am the publisher of this book, and perhaps you should take the five stars I have given it with a pinch of salt. On the other hand, I would urge you to pay attention to the alternative reviews I offer above, from people who know what they are talking about. I don't make a habit of reviewing the books I publish - if they get a bad review from a reader I tend to shrug my shoulders. But I am passionate about this particular book, and am frustrated to find it so badly misrepresented. My answer to the reviewer from Venice: Hugh Bicheno is not an amateur, and perhaps you should leave the reviewing to the professionals!
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Title: Lepanto 1571 (Campaign, 114) by Angus Konstam, Christa Hook, Tony Bryan ISBN: 1841764094 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the 16th Century, Revised Edition by John Francis Guilmartin ISBN: 1591143470 Publisher: United States Naval Inst. Pub. Date: February, 2004 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: Renaissance War Galley 1470-1590 by Angus Konstam, Tony Bryan ISBN: 1841764434 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Defeat in Detail : The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912-1913 by Edward J. Erickson ISBN: 0275978885 Publisher: Praeger Publishers Pub. Date: 28 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: The Renaissance at War by Thomas Arnold ISBN: 0304363537 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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