Readable, if sometimes confusing, account of the renaissance mercenaries, in particular the rivalry between the Malatestas and the Montefeltros ( )

Vendetta offers sumptuous color illustrations, good maps, a tourist guide and plenty of data appendices. If only the main text conformed to this high standard. Alas, this difficult-to-read book is in severe need of an editor.

Bicheno's unbound ambition led him to include copious amounts of undigested information in an Old Testament-like procession of names and places. Barbara Tuchman has postulated an excellent rule: Never introduce a name without locating and characterizing the person or place, a rule Bicheno breaks like no other author I read before. A sample (p. 32): "But at the same time he was in secret contact with Cardinal Legate Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, sent by Pope Innocent IV to take control of Massa Trabaria and the Foglia valley. When this was discovered the Omodei-controlled podestà of Rimini sent a letter to the Imperial Count of Romagna, under whom the local lords were assembled at Imola, to arrest Mastin." This is partly the fault of his attempt to cram 200 years of local, regional and European history into thirty pages. An all but impossible task for even a master author. The main protagonists only enter on page 135, which leaves barely one hundred pages to present their twin biographies.

In contrast to the dramatic title, the story lacks a showdown, partly the fault of Bicheno's chapter structure, partly the "fault" of their biographies: Vendetta conjures up images of sneaky murders and intrigues. These two neighbors and competing professional soldiers, however, are better characterized as rivals who met, opposed but also collaborated on the battlefield, in the cities and at the courts of Italy (like today's management consultants vying for the multinational companies' business). Like small-scale farmers with a second job today, they were caught in a trap: In order to sustain their territorial possessions, they had to tender their services to more important lords. This in turn prevented them from consolidating and expanding their local holdings. Thus, at important junctions, these professional soldiers would abandon their mission to cater for a local emergency (or a petty conquest), rendering their masters furious, but were unable, most of the time, to resolve the local problems in their short-time intervention.

The book's nuggets suffer from a complete lack of footnotes or even chapter notes. At the most, Bicheno will cite an author's name, leaving it to the reader to find the page of the text or idea quoted. This not only transgresses the professional standards, it also diminishes the value of Bicheno's research and findings. Instead of directing his readers to his Italian sources, one is left with a rather cursory bibliography.

The book is tainted by Bicheno's need to vent his (sometimes directly contradictory) opinions. Unless one happens to be a extremely narrow-minded English Tory, and even then, one will cringe from reading the rants directed at Marxists, lawyers, academics, Europe, American imperialism, Islam, government bureaucracy, global warming, ... A sample (p. 76): "The otherwise incomprehensible solidarity of Western leftists with Islamists whose world-view is violently hostile to their own may stem from a common psychopathology: submissives need to submit - to what or to whom appears immaterial." Apart from this vile fact-free insult of leftists, one wonders why these submissive leftists have not yet volunteered to submit to the superior ideas of Hugh Bicheno (as he himself proclaims, content does not matter)? Why venture abroad when you can be insulted in your armchair? Again, an editor might have restrained the author. Bicheno himself recommends Maria Grazia Pernis and Laurie Schneider Adams' Federico da Montefeltro & Sigismondo Malatesta: The Eagle and the Elephant, probably a better choice. ( )