God's Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power--A History of the Jesuits

Rating:
Summary: Could have been so much more
Review: The history is fascinating - so many martyrs, so many enemies. The telling of that history, in this instance at least, is somewhat weighty. No doubt Mr. Wright is a very bright man and he does have a great appreciation of his subject matter but his literary style smacks of academia. Save for the sexy sub-heading -"Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power" the book reads like a thesis. His use of vocabulary borders on the obscure - not a trait inherent in bestsellers. Which this book could have been. All of the ingredients are there - " Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power". Dan Brown has demonstrated a public fascination with arcana (albeit in a predictable and simplistic fashion) and Eco proved that one can be literary without being pedantic.
All in all, I was disappointed but stuck with it to find out how it would end!

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but too short!
Review: The history of the Society of Jesus is an extremely interesting and exciting one, as is perfectly clear after reading this extremely well writen book. Unfortunately, the book is much too short, and we get a very cursory history, with a lot of mentions of things that hapened, but no explanations as to what these things were. I wish that the author would have expanded his book more, so that there would have been more detail to it. One small example is the missionary activity of Francis Xavier: it's mentioned, but we don't really find out anything about it in the book. Perhaps this is just the author's way of getting us to read more deeply into the subject, but i don't know. I learned a lot about the Jesuits in this book, but I was left with the hunger for more detailed knowledge.