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Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting, a good read.
Review: John Allen has always impressed me with his newspaper writing and whenever I've heard him on National Public Radio. I was happy to have come across this book here and found it a very fresh perspective on the world inside the Vatican. As those of you who read these types of books will know, there are many, many books on the topic out there and I gather that half of those that are written are merely quoting from the other half. Put this one in the TO BE QUOTED FROM PILE. It's original material, I particularly like his Myths about the Vatican section. Thank you John Allen.
Rating:
Summary: The Bob Woodward of the Vatican
Review: Maybe John Allen doesn't quite have the dramatic flair that Woodward has for the midnight, behind closed door scenes (like Nixon asking Kissinger to pray with him), but Allen's information is just as interesting and reliable, and the writing is pretty good too. And unlike most of the people you have writing about the Vatican Allen really does seem to walk a straight line in terms of the politics. A reviewer has commented that the even-handedness has bothered him/her, but nothing bothers me more than partisan reporting through rose coloured glass or the pessimism of a disaffected church goer. All the Pope's Men isn't much of a whodunnit but it is a very interesting examination of the psychology and the workings of the Vatican. It is a bureaucracy, of sorts, but I found it's workings fascinating nonetheless.
Rating: 
Summary: Evenhanded, to a fault
Review: Probably no one ever examined the Vatican, or Holy See, or the Curia to this extent, and I guess American Catholics should be glad there is a non-clerical person doing the examination, but Allen is so even-handed that he seems to question nothing, and everything. In his chronology of the sexual abuse crisis Allen could be writing about trade tariffs instead of horrific crimes covered up by his sources, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. And that's the problem.
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