Rating: 
Summary: There will always be elite air sniffers...
Review: And you can read some of their reviews here! Particularly when it comes to reading history there are some who take their stands and defy anyone to dare present a fresh perspective other than the one they've deemed 'the right'. And there are always those who see the name of a 'celebrity reviewer' and sniff their superior distain. While I may not think of Sean Hannity as a historian, I'll take William F. Buckley's recommendation as quite erudite enough for me, thanks. Not being an air-sniffer myself but being a reader who doesn't wish to get bogged down in the pedantic (and who appreciates the antic) there is no better concise history of the Catholic Church than THIS book (not even the great Concise History of the Catholic Church by Bokenkotter!). Crocker's prose is accessible and lucid; he reads almost like a novel as he gallops along occasionally inserting an insightful and snarky throwaway line here or there. I get the sense he'd be a skillful and devastating debater with a few of our reviewers here, and I'd love to go a few rounds with him myself over a cup of tea. The book is a delight.
Rating: 
Summary: Intolerance: This Book's Fatal Flaw
Review: As a Protestant minister, I picked this book up out of a genuine desire to learn more about the history of the Roman Catholic church - which, until the point of the tragic split between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, is in a very real sense my spiritual history too. What I discovered in Mr. Crocker's book is an eminently readable, erudite history of the church. It's one I've enjoyed reading very much: until, without warning, I felt stung by an acerbic, anti-Protestant barb. One... then another... and another. Before long, I realized there were too many of these comments for them to be merely incidental to the main argument. There's a real anti-Protestant bias to this history, which becomes manifest in the almost vicious glee with which Mr. Crocker "sticks it to" mainstream figures like Hus and Wycliffe and Luther (and without seriously dealing with the complexity of their thought, or even admitting the ways the Roman church subsequently adopted many of their leading ideas). I haven't yet gotten to his treatment of Vatican 2 -- and I will persist, because there's still much of value in his narrative -- but I'm fearful that, based on what precedes it, he will be less than enthusiastic about this landmark reform, which is still the source of great hope for many, both within and without the Roman church. I'm all for raising up the Roman Catholic Church, and would love to see it "triumph" over its unfair critics... but there is such a thing as a loyal opposition, too, and when an apologist like Mr. Crocer trashes that loyal opposition, he is not advancing the cause of his particular expression of the Christian tradition, but is rather pulling us all down. There's a difference between triumph and triumphalism, and Mr. Crocker does not appear to understand that difference.
Rating: 
Summary: As a retired teacher...as a practicing Roman Catholic
Review: As a retired teacher, I am disappointed by this book. It does all the things a college teacher tells his freshmen students not to do when writing a research paper, and very little of what the students are told to do. Secondary sources, encyclopedia articles, hearsay, discredited sources [with excuse or justification provided], personal opinion, bias, prejudice appear on every page. Strong evidence that the writer is familiar with the "must read" sources on his topic, objectivity, presentation of both sides, relegation of unavoidable personal views to footnotes, reliance on primary sources appear so seldom as to seem totally absent. As a practicing Roman Catholic, I am appalled by this book. I can appreciate that someone is thankful to be Roman Catholic. Unfortunately, Mr. Crocker nowhere displays that gratitude. He does, however, display considerable invidious pride that he is now Roman Catholic. If appalled is too strong a word, then allow me to say that at the very least, one has to be distrusting of someone who writes a history of an institution only, it seems, in order to give substance to his vanity. I would not recommend this book to anyone as I believe no one will learn from this book anything worth the book's price and certainly not worth the time to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: An Epic Story Told in Epic Style
Review: Heart-felt, loyal Catholics have long lacked a historical apologia that would make them proud and help them understand there is a reason history developed the way it did for the Church.
*Triumph* does just that. Of course, a study this epic in scope will garner more than its fair share of detractors and quibblers. Even as a Protestant fellow with philosophical training, I believe this book is an inspiration to every reader to pursue religious truth and personal faith with verve, elan, and sincerity. I, too, disagreed with some things--such as Crocker's take on Ockham. I believe that much of the evils of modern academia and relativism can be traced to Nicholas of Autrecourt (not the razor-efficient thinking of Ockham). Nevertheless, Crocker can be forgiven because Nicholas is notoriously difficult to write about because most of his works were burned. I also disagreed with the more hyperbolic descriptors such as Rousseau being "insane." (He was a pernicious fellow, that is beyond debate.) Still, it is exactly this energy with the pen that makes the book a delight to read. And to single out these two slips fails to communicate all that is incisive and impressive in *Triumph.* If you want history written with the grandeur and glory it deserves, here is the book and here is the author. Even when Crocker lets Protestants have it, I smiled at
his energy, knowing that a thesis, like any defendant, requires an ardent and eloquent advocate. For too long, the Church and faith itself have been in a rigged trial, warped by the pretensions and prejudices of smug elites. If you believe in dusty, boring, obscure scholarship, this book is not for you. If you believe in strong, decisive, evocative prose, then *Triumph* is for you. Perhaps you will read a bit more after this, but for those who lack a positive and affirmative founding in the titans and ideas that shaped Church history, this book is a worthy companion and a mighty first step.
Rating:
Summary: The Rest of the Story
Review: I bought the hardback of this book after seeing the author on C-Span Book TV. I disagree completely with the negative reviews of this book for the following reasons. First, the authors of those reviews seem to be well-versed in the history of the last 2000 years and object to how Mr. Crocker presents his version. All I can say is they have been lucky not to have had to sit through what passes as history as I have. I have never heard Mr. Crocker's side, even in so-called Catholic books. "A church that never went right would be quite as miraculous as a church that never went wrong," Chesterton quipped in Orthodoxy. In all the other versions of history I've been exposed to, the church never goes right. Obviously their fairy tales were as flawed as Mr. Crocker's critics feel his presentation to be. Yet even now these inventive revisions top the best seller list. How I pity the innocent readers who, unaware of the marketing ploy foisted on them, may attempt to create a coherent philosophy from the hacked together bits of historical shrapnel that pass for, and are taught as, history. Second, if you wonder why so many people are today reconsidering the Catholic Church, it's because its detractors have overstated their case. It's as if, to quote Chesterton again, "any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with." All that happens is one loses respect for the beaters and gains respect for the beaten. Chesterton wrote his comments 100 years ago, summarily dismantling the idiotic pre-modern world (back now as the idiotic post-modern world). As a convert, Crocker is naturally excited to tell the other side of the story, and as a hungry soul starved by the meaninglessness of the non-philosophies of today I was excited to read it. One caveat: the time of the Reformation and the Thirty Year war is an account of unbelievable violence and carnage. But as Mel Gibson's movie shows, a great many in our day are hungry for the truth to set us free.
Rating:
Summary: Previous Reviewers have verfiable Agenda
Review: I like to note that the reviewer below who signed "Orthodox Theologian (MTh) student of the late Dr. J.S. Romanides, Harvard and U. of Athens professor" is particularly biased. The author of Hitler's Pope wrote in 1993 in THE HIDING PLACES OF GOD (Less than Five years before publishing Hitler's Pope) "human beings are morally, psychologically, materially better off without a belief in God" He writes as an ex-catholic who quit the seminary and remarks in 1993 "I took delight in attempting to undermine the beliefs of my fellow seminarians..." The publication of HITLER"S POPE shows a picture the man who became Pius XII with a few soldiers. This is only the tip of the iceberg, but this hardly one who can write objective history. Therefore, trashing Crocker's TRIUMPH: THE POWER AND THE GLORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH based on a comparison to Hitler's Pope is hardly credible. Its been several years since I read TRIUMPH but the one point that stayed with me Mr. Crocker's dictum that most of the heresies began in the east. A quick consultation of any encycopedia can confirm this fact. One must also keep Crocker wrote this in response the NYT bestseller CONSTANTINE'S SWORD hailed by liberal (and liberal Catholic's) as greatest thing sliced bread which is bitter attack ob the church by one of the so-called "PRACTICING ROMAN CATHOLICS...". I have just one thing to ask: those self-riteous pundits who pile on in attacking Mr. Crocker's rejoinder, Where we they when CONSTANTINE's SWORD was published?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I tell every Catholic intellectual I meet to read this book. Crocker is criticized for condensing such an expansive history into under 1,000 pages, but I think by doing so, he has offered the history of the Church (its wonderful traditions, saints and pitfalls) to a wider audience. He lyrically tells the story of most of Catholicism's greatest figures from Jesus Christ to John Paul the Second. His pages on St. Patrick is the best condensed history of his complicated (and little known) life that I've ever read. His book does editorialize, and if you are a Catholic wanting to hold fast to traditions, you'll really enjoy the book. But, Crocker is always fair, and the book is recommended to any Catholic scholar, or fallen away Catholic, or history buff, or secularist....
Rating:
Summary: Great story, well told
Review: I tell every Catholic intellectual I meet to read this book. Crocker is criticized for condensing such an expansive history into under 1,000 pages, but I think by doing so, he has offered the history of the Church (its wonderful traditions, saints and pitfalls) to a wider audience. He lyrically tells the story of most of Catholicism's greatest figures from Jesus Christ to John Paul the Second. His pages on St. Patrick is the best condensed history of his complicated (and little known) life that I've ever read. His book does editorialize, and if you are a Catholic wanting to hold fast to traditions, you'll really enjoy the book. But, Crocker is always fair, and the book is recommended to any Catholic scholar, or fallen away Catholic, or history buff, or secularist....
Rating: 
Summary: Good History Badly Written
Review: I was really looking forward to reading this book, based on its title. But, upon receipt, on the back cover I saw one of the "personalities" called upon to recommend this volume and the red flags went up. Sean Hannity is not a source I would look to when recommemnding anything Catholic. That said, I soldiered on anyway. First, Mr. Crocker should tame his enthusiasm for being Catholic, as it affects his objectivity. Second, the author is too apologetic in instances when the Church was clearly in the wrong. It is not that he doesn't say that the Church was wrong, it is just that he feels that events justified how the Church acted. Well, to quote the warn out cliche', "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Also, he completely ignores or glosses over events that were important, even though the Church does look bad, most notably the Mortara incident of the 19th century. His lack of objectivity meant that I am very reluctant to pass this work along to my non-Catholic friends. He does do an adaquate job on the Church and how it reacted to Naziism and Communism. The highlight of the book was his narative about the Mexican revolution of the early 2oth century, which is too often ignored in the annals of Catholic historical writing. Finally, you cannot give half star ratings. If I could, H.W. Crocker III would have gotten 2 1/2 stars for Triumph. Enthusiasm is not substitute for objectivity.
Rating:
Summary: I Wish the Book Might Be Better
Review: I wish I could speak highly of this book, partly because it's the right idea (a readable overview of Catholic history), and partly because my fellow reviewer from Los Osos seems rather harsh. But in honesty, I am disappointed with the book. One expects, as a necessary evil, that there will be simplifications when attempting to cover 2,000 years in only 500 pages, and one only hopes that the simplifications won't be overly objectionable. But Crocker repeatedly suggested that the Eastern Church is in something of a 'steady state' of Arian heresy (so that one can hardly fault our Orthodox neighbor for feeling put upon); and if Crocker does not really believe this (and we hope he does not) he ought to have written more carefully. He owes it to himself and to his audience to have reached a much better understanding of the Eastern Church, so that his few comments on the East, as he rolls through the period of the Fathers, are better advised, and certainly less uncharitable. Crocker doesn't really help his case when he gives the text of the Creed, as ratified by the Council of Nicaea (supposedly), but including in the Creed (without comment) the filioque. One can understand if he doesn't want to bog down in a dispute, but even if he feels that the filioque absolutely belongs in the Creed (a question currently in discussion among Catholics and Orthodox), to imply that this phrase was ratified at that point, by that Council ... it's inexcusably bad history. And I should very much have wished such a book to be completely responsible history. Western Catholics are, sadly, as a rule generally ignorant of the Eastern Church; this book, certainly in its first half, ought to have been a step towards remedying that ignorance, rather than another cinder-block in the wall of prejudice. Perhaps the further-reaching good will be, that this book sets the stage for a genuinely sound (and equally readable) overview hereafter.
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