“Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales (First Printing, Commemorative Edition)”, by H.P. Lovecraft, Edited by Stephen Jones, Illustrated by Les Edwards

880 pages, Gollancz, ISBN-13: 978-0575081574

Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales is a great place to start if you're new to Lovecraft. It's a hefty book, and the leather binding has so far held up to my bedside abuse. I was seduced by the promise of illustrations, but they seem to be merely a set of proprietary clip-art stamped onto stories with marginal regard to relevance. A few editorial/typographical misses, while the quality paper and typesetting make for easy reading. I've enjoyed the included essay on Lovecraft as it's an enjoyable refresher for HPL fans and an interesting primer for newcomers. The pages it consumes, however, still don’t offer much expanded coverage of HPL's oeuvre.

In my opinion, most (if not all) of his best tales are included, which is why I don't regret the purchase. I do, though, regret the general lack of a deluxe edition of Lovecraft's work more suited to the title of this omnibus, e.g. a thick faux-flesh binding like The Evil Dead commemorative DVD set. Gimmicky, yeah, but what a conversation piece!

The market is ripe for a lovingly crafted edition with relevant placement of the best of Lovecraft artists, annotations, and definitely a pronunciation and glossary appendix! My vocabulary has expanded since I first read HPL as a teenager, but I'm still tripping on some of his archaisms. 

“Champlain's Dream: The European Founding of North America”, by David Hackett Fischer

848 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-1416593324

David Hackett Fischer's new full-length biography of Samuel de Champlain is pure nectar to the serious reader of history. Full of life, vivid, entertaining, fascinating and full of insight, this is biography at its best. Painted on the vast canvas of 16^th & 17^th Century Europe and North America, we see a fully developed portrait of a fascinating and complex individual who played such a key role in the unfolding of North American culture and civilization.

This story begins in Brouage, which is in the Saintonge province in France. Here, a young Samuel Champlain learned how to be even tempered and to sail. In his early twenties he participated in religious wars in Brittany and then went on a secret mission to Spain and its American colonies on behalf of Henry IV. After learning much about sailing, war, and different cultures Champlain decides to accompany Francois Grave Du Pont, Pierre Dugua de Mons, and others to explore the north eastern parts of the Americas. Throughout the years he takes meticulous notes, creates charts, and collects all sorts of data for Henry IV. He also sees Pierre Dugua de Mons and other well off leaders such as Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt fail at dealing positively with local Native American tribes. Through years of experience in practical matters such as war and sailing, efforts to treat Native Americans with great respect, constant support from Henry IV, and from inheriting most of his uncles estate Samuel de Champlain succeeds in not only becoming wealthy, experienced, and respected by both Native Americans and Europeans but also in gaining the necessary support in France to lead an expedition into French territories in the Americas.

After having seen much failure from leaders who could not relate to Native Americans and because of the religious wars in France between Protestants and Catholics, Champlain decides to lead a religiously mixed crew to New France in order to secure the territory as quickly as possible. He does run in to road blocks such as Henry IV dying, being shunned by Henry IV's successors, Cardinal Richelieu's distrust and other setbacks. Furthermore, any support that he does receive from France is often minimal and sets him up for failure. Due to these circumstances New France is taken over by the British and the Iroquois run amuck. Nevertheless, Champlain never gives up and pursues his goal of a tolerant New France. In the meantime, his supporters are either killed or stripped of their authority on religious grounds and he himself is often looked down upon even though he has converted to Catholicism. He marries Helene Broulle to gain a relationship with a prominent French family but that does not work out since she is many decades younger and in the end he spends most of his time trying to please a woman who is very different from himself. This is a repeating problem with Champlain. He often tries to convince stubborn people to do good deeds and almost always fails because these same people have self interest in mind before the common good. On a side note, Fischer also suggests that Samuel de Champlain is gay and the son of Henry IV but there is no strong evidence for either one of those theories.

In the end, Samuel de Champlain has a stroke and withers away for months before dying surrounded by Native American and French friends. He's seen many personal successes but has failed just likes his predecessors at getting much needed attention for New France. To say that he is accomplished, respected, and has vast life experience is an understatement. However, even this strong willed and intelligent person could not fuse magnets that are of opposite charges. Meaning that his good nature, wealth, intelligence, charm, and support from Native Americans and from many French did not account for much with the French nobility and Cardinal Richelieu. It seems that Champlain was always moving two steps forward and one step back.

Overall, it was thrilling to read about Champlain's adventures, perseverance, and the political climate of his time. Yet it was very disheartening that Samuel de Champlain died without getting the French support that he needed and was often disrespected by the French leaders in power after Henry IV. If I had to choose a favorite part of the book it would be regarding torture and how Champlain vehemently opposed it. I particularly liked that Samuel de Champlain stood up to his Native American allies and refused to support them if they continued to be vicious to other tribes in the area. His reluctance to be violent did not work with some of the Native Americans living in New France nor with most of the French nobility in Europe but it did make an impact on many of the people around him. If nothing else, this man left a history of good will behind when he died. I can definitely respect that about him.

“God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades”, by Rodney Stark

288 pages, HarperOne, ISBN-13: 978-0061582615

Very few people have much good to say about the Crusades nowadays. Most think it was a terrible blight on Christian history, and cannot be condoned or justified in any way. Certainly during the past few centuries, Christianity has been attacked, and people have sought to discredit the faith, partly on the basis of the Crusades. In such an atmosphere, this book by Rodney Stark is as about as revolutionary as they come. He takes head on myth after myth surrounding the Crusades, and makes the case that the Crusades not only had a place, but were in fact in many ways justifiable. He clearly demonstrates that modern histories about the Crusades are among the great hatchet jobs of recent times.

Dispelling the many myths about the Crusades takes guts, and someone with the right intellectual and academic qualifications. Stark is certainly the man for the job: he has become one of our finest writers on the sociology and history of religion, and is unafraid to go against the tide. In this important volume he debunks the historical revisionism (which is often coupled with anti-Christian bigotry) about the Crusades to offer us a more sober and clear picture of what in fact took place. He notes that it was especially during the time of the Enlightenment and onwards that critics claimed that the Crusaders were mainly Western imperialists, those who set out after land and loot. Moreover, the contrast is often made between the bloodthirsty barbaric Christians, and the peace-loving Muslims. But as Stark persuasively documents, none of this is close to the truth. The real story is this: the Crusades were certainly provoked, and the Crusaders were mainly concerned to free the Holy Lands from Muslim oppression and to protect religious pilgrims who travelled there.

Indeed, to properly understand the Crusades, a lot of background information needs to be considered. That is why Stark spends the first hundred pages of his book looking at the 600-year period of Muslim conquests and dhimmitude. The story of course begins in the seventh century when Muslim armies swept over the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe. One Christian land after another was attacked and conquered by advancing Muslim armies. Stark reminds us that Muhammad told his followers, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’” Therefore a century after his death vast swathes of territory hung under the bloody sword of Islam.

And what of the conquered Christians living under Islamic rule? They, along with Jews, were known as dhimmis. While revisionist historians and Muslim apologists speak of Muslim tolerance here, the “truth about life under Muslim rule is quite different.” Indeed, the subject peoples had few options: death, enslavement or conversion was the only avenues open to them. Dhimmitude was no picnic. Death was the fate of anyone who dared to convert out of Islam. No churches or synagogues could be built. There was to be no public praying or reading of Scripture. They were at best treated as second-class citizens, and at worst, punished and killed. And massacres of Jews and Christians were quite common in the centuries leading up to the Crusades. In 1032-1033 in Morocco alone, there were over six thousand Jews murdered. Jerusalem fell to the Muslims in 638. The Dome of the Rock was built from 685 to 691, and churches and synagogues were leveled in the ensuing centuries. The condition of Christians in Jerusalem was pretty appalling during this period, as was the plight of penitent pilgrims seeking to enter Jerusalem. They suffered much persecution, and risked their lives simply to travel to the holy city. The destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher – along with thousands of other Christian churches – under the bloody reign of Tariq al-Hakim at the end of the first millennia simply served as the climax to all this misery and outrage.

It is in this light of six centuries of Islamic conquest, bloodshed and tyranny that the Crusades must be viewed. They were not always pretty, but life in general back then was not pretty. If Crusader excesses took place, this was just par for the course, as excesses by Muslims and others were more than commonplace. As Stark reminds us, “Granted, it was a cruel and bloody age, but nothing is to be gained either in terms of moral insights or historical comprehension by anachronistically imposing the Geneva Convention on these times.”

He looks at the various Crusades, dealing with the host of mythologies that have grown up around them. One is the fanciful depiction of Saladin as some gallant, humane Muslim resisting those bloodthirsty Christians. For example, when he re-conquered Jerusalem in 1187, the city was spared a massacre. But the rules of warfare back then stipulated that cities would be spared if they were not forced to be taken by storm. So while bloodshed was limited, “half the city's Latin Christian residents were marched away to the slave markets”. And Jerusalem was the exception to Saladin's normal style. Savage butchery of his enemies was his usual habit. Indeed, he had been looking forward to massacring the inhabitant of Jerusalem, but a compromise was struck which prevented this. But he had plenty of other opportunities to let the blood flow freely, often at his own hand.

Then there is the myth that the Crusades have been a longstanding grievance amongst Muslims. Not so argues Stark: “Muslim antagonism about the Crusades did not appear until about 1900, in reaction against the decline of the Ottoman Empire”.

Christians today can well argue whether the Crusades were in fact warranted. But any such discussion about the pros and cons of the matter must be made under a clear understanding of what exactly transpired and why. This book admirably serves that purpose, and must be the starting point for any future debates over the topic.