Later that day the guns of Saint Angelo opened up. A volley of human heads bombarded the Ottoman camp across the water. There would be no repeat of the chivalrous truce at Rhodes.

As noted this marks my first ever tandem read with my brother. I am immensely proud of him but few would ever regard him as bookish. He had a brief infatuation with Rimbaud and Keats 20 years ago but that was soon abandoned. He now works on or around Pennsylvania Avenue. His attitudes have softened and become more nuanced. Over Thanksgiving I had expressed an ongoing interest in Medieval/Renaissance matters and we wound up agreeing on this text.

I remarked rather quickly to my brother that this isn't great history but it is a compelling albeit horrifying narrative. Mr. Crowley couches his text in terms of a teleology, an ongoing "clash of civilizations" which will only be resolved in some distant future. There is no regard for the Pirenne Thesis. There are simply arguments about a universal dichotomy, one of which neither party could agree on anything, not even the primacy of their conflict. Nor is there any need in speaking of a consensus regarding either the Christians or the Muslims in the 16th Century. The Holy Roman Empire devoted much more of its resources to fighting the French and the Protestants than it ever did the Ottomans.

That said what unfolds is bleak. Navies of the time were dependant on rowers and this perk-free position had to be filled by ongoing slaving. Thus the soul of the World's Center was at stake and the means to victory were human bondage.

In his afterward, Crowley notes the abundance of accounts left from the events and its participants. I wish he would've spent more time sifting, parsing and comparing the merits of rival testimony. Call me an idealist, but isn't that the nature of a historian?