Book Alert / Dogs of God -- Columbus, the Inquisition and the Defeat of the Moors

Ask any American what he associates the year 1492 with, and 95 of 100 will say, "It's when Columbus discovered America." We all learn in school that Columbus was enabled in that effort by his patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain. But, as James Reston, Jr. brings out in his new book, Dogs of God -- Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors, that exploration would likely not have occurred had said royalty not been able to brutally shore up their domestic policy earlier in the year.

Reston, the son of James Reston, Sr., the late and legendary Washington bureau chief for The New York Times,  has written a dozen books on subjects as varied as baseball, the Civil War and Galileo. Now he turns to the Spanish Inquisition during which the Spanish rulers employed a Dominican priest, Tomas de Torquemada, whose very name has come to suggest torture, to bring into line the Moors of Granada and the Spanish Jews, 120,000 of them fled to escape Torquemada's lash.

The book contains an index and bibliography but lacks source notes. It is illustrated and also contains maps and a dramatic personae.