Review by Choice Review
Accomplished journalist Downey's biography of Isabella, queen of Castile (1474-1504), makes accessible to a wide audience a careful, nuanced account of a highly successful monarch whose accomplishments scholars have often mistakenly attributed to her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. Downey argues convincingly that Isabella overcame a difficult youth to become a dominant monarch who provided vision, persistence, and high moral standards that set her apart from Ferdinand, Pope Alexander VI, and numerous other rulers of the time. As "the warrior queen," she successfully protected Castile's western flank from Portugal, restored order to her realm, engineered the reconquest of the Kingdom of Granada from Muslim rule, and worked for years to protect Europe from the Ottoman Turks. Devoted to Christianity, the well-being of her five children, and Spain's security, she saw the world in black-and-white terms, a perspective that contributed to the creation and harshness of the Inquisition and associated religious intolerance. Based on a thorough review of secondary literature and marked by reliance on printed primary sources, Downey's thoughtful, gracefully written biography will change many readers' minds about the queen's importance. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic libraries should purchase this book. --Mark A. Burkholder, University of Missouri--St. Louis
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
WHILE FERDINAND OF ARAGON has always gotten first billing, Isabella of Castile was the driving force of 15th-century Spanish-and therefore European-politics. "Isabella: The Warrior Queen" follows Kirstin Downey's 2009 "The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins-Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Minimum Wage," and if so immensely provocative a figure as Isabella seems an unlikely successor to Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of labor, who quietly worked out of the public eye, the two women successfully maneuvered in an almost exclusively male world of politics. In fact, Downey credits Isabella with instituting a "shift from medieval to modern management principles." After a series of botched betrothals, Isabella, 18, accepted the hand of Ferdinand of Aragon, 17. But when Ferdinand's adolescent lust soon gave way to what Isabella would discover was her young husband's single heroic pursuit-adultery-she wasted no time brooding. Instead, she used his weakness to her advantage, furthering her own career by handling whatever crises developed during his absences. Her infamous, subzero sang-froid inspired her assumption of the Spanish throne in one of the smoothest, swiftest coups in European history. With Ferdinand conveniently preoccupied elsewhere, in 1474, immediately upon the death of her brother, King Enrique, the 23-year-old Isabella rebounded from grief with astonishing alacrity. The funeral Mass of a ruler, who had oddly-a little too oddly-named no successor, was barely over before Isabella had replaced her mourning dress with a resplendent gown and jewels. Mounted on a white horse, she returned to the church she had just left and had herself crowned before a glittering entourage. Ferdinand, who unaccountably signed a prenup limiting his power to that of prince consort, may have provided the nominal face of Spain's monarchy, but it was Isabella who was ravenous for power. By the end of her life, in 1504-she was 53-she could admit that she had "caused great calamities and depopulated towns, provinces and kingdoms"-but not with regret. Ever "more rigid and less tolerant" in her fanatical Catholicism, she unleashed the Inquisition as what Downey calls "a useful mechanism for rooting out all kinds of dissent." As Isabella knew, there was but one way to power, and that was the expulsion of the Ottoman Turks, the "most powerful land force in Europe" whose "military operations were at the core of its existence." Some would judge Isabella's core little different. She handled the logistics of warfare, endangering her family by taking them along on military campaigns, even going into labor while closeted with advisers in her war room. Moorish unrest, Inquisition, Reconquista, colonial expansion: That so many critical forces were in play during the reign of Isabella of Castile presents an organizational challenge to a biographer-the literary equivalent of spinning plates on sticks. Downey unpacks every aspect separately and thoroughly, a valid approach when each carries a significant burden of detail, but one that necessarily disrupts the chronology of the life that unfolds among those tensions, the story of Isabella herself requiring jumps back and forth in time and inspiring redundancies when details arise in different contexts. Rather than re-examining the almost too familiar cruelties of the Inquisition, Downey focuses on Isabella's use of it to reunite Spain's kingdom by underscoring the urgency of eradicating Moors and Jews. If the Spanish didn't join forces, they would lose the homeland forever, and Isabella knew that unification was the necessary springboard for her monomaniacal quest to convert every single person in her expanding empire to Christianity, a platform for a figure of such sparkling, oddball charisma that his adventures make for the most lively account in the biography, stealing a good deal of Isabella's show: In Christopher Columbus the queen found a mariner sufficiently brilliant and mad to set forth across the ocean for the Indies at a time when sailors avoided losing sight of land. And she found a messianic vision that dovetailed with her own, a vainglory that matched hers in undertaking so preposterous a risk as sailing out in three small, ill-provisioned ships-the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. The quest took longer than anticipated, wrecked one ship, and consequently abandoned 39 men, none of whom survived their native hosts. Columbus's tendency to embroider the truth showcased the other, friendly natives and the ground beneath their bare feet, sown with gold. Unsurprisingly, aristocrats competed for a spot on what became a "semiregular shuttle service of ships" that resulted in more, and more honest, accounts of paradise. The natives who weren't friendly turned out to be cannibals; syphilis traveled east as smallpox sailed west; dishonorable conquistadors ran off on freelance treasure hunts; and those who could afford travel to the New World lost their enthusiasm for what Columbus never admitted was not in fact China or India, grass huts and cannibals notwithstanding. But it was New Spain, and within 20 years of its Warrior Queen's death, her homeland had become "the world's first truly global superpower," its most influential and indelible export the church to which she was so fanatically devoted. Dead or alive, she got her way: Christianity proved a currency more enduring than gold. ? KATHRYN HARRISON'S "Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured" has just been published.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 30, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
Forget the power behind the throne that sobriquet would never satisfy a woman as strong-willed and intelligent as Isabella I. According to biographer Downey, Isabella was definitely the ultimate power broker in the dynamic duo commonly referred to as Ferdinand and Isabella. Artfully navigating, outwitting, and outmaneuvering the men in her life, including her brother and her husband, Isabella managed to put her own unique stamp on the emerging modern world with a series of governmental and religious reforms, international explorations think Columbus and financial strategies that put a soon-to-be-unified Spain on the map. Infused with a religious fervor fueled by her admiration for Joan of Arc, she ardently believed in her God-given right to rule with an often iron fist. As one of the most influential political players of the transitional era bridging the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Isabella has earned her place in the spotlight.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The reserved, devoutly Catholic Isabella seized the Castilian throne in 1474, when she was just 23 years old. Having relegated her unwise husband Ferdinand to consort status, Isabella enjoyed major military successes, popularity with both her advisors and her subjects, and significant territorial acquisitions in the New World. Downey (The Woman Behind the New Deal) argues that Isabella served as a true paragon of Machiavelli's good prince; from her demonstrations of political and battlefield strength in quelling the Ottoman Empire's efforts at expansion to negotiating treaties and her offspring's politically fraught marriage contracts. Downey shows how Isabella's reign prepared Renaissance Spain's rise to superpower status by consolidating multiple, often ineffectually led, kingdoms into one, all the while patronizing exploration and art. Perfect for both historical novices and experts in European history, this solidly-researched, engaging description of Isabella's achievements also humanizes her through discussion of her intricate relationships with combative family members and allows readers to see Isabella's fingerprints on Renaissance culture and religion. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Queen Isabella I of Castile (1401-1504), according to Dorney (The Woman Behind the New Deal), was one of the most competent rulers of the male-dominated Middle Ages. Her authority in the affairs of her realm is buried in the formula "Ferdinand and Isabella," which she wholeheartedly endorsed. Yet Isabella established her dominance at the beginning of her reign, informing her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon of her accession only after she had been publicly acclaimed. Downey (ID?)argues that many of Isabella's actions weren't always sound; her persecution of Jews and Moors tarnished her reputation, as did Spain's treatment of New World natives. Here readers see Isabella's actions from the viewpoint of her age. The author is, at times, too trusting of the testimony of the various partisan chroniclers of Isabella's reign, but she presents a well-written, balanced study. Excursuses lay out the back history and explain the period culture and mind-set. VERDICT This engaging biography will appeal to casual readers of history but will not offer new information to scholars. [See Prepub Alert, 6/2/14.]-David Keymer, Modesto, CA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Downey (The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, 2009) brings her journalistic expertise to this excellent chronicle of the end of the Middle Ages and that time period's most significant female figures. Isabella (1451-1504) was queen of Castile and Lon in her own right, a kingdom much larger than that of her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. Even so, contemporaries and history have always given him preference of place. However, Isabella surely ranks as one of history's greatest women. She insisted on marrying Ferdinand and no other, despite the opposition of her half brother. Upon his death, Isabella assumed the throne. Her reign was characterized by a series of wars, waged by her mostly unfaithful husband but organized and supplied by her. For the first few years, they fought incursions from Portugal, followed by three years of civil war and, finally, more than a decade fighting the Moors. The fall of Granada in 1492 and expulsion of the Moors was hailed by all, but it was a small benefit to offset the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks. Isabella demanded that the defeated Moors, as well as the Jewish population, convert or emigrate. At this point, she introduced the Spanish Inquisition, which was initially aimed at backsliding converted Jews but expanded to include Muslims. Widely known as Christopher Columbus' sponsor, she kept him waiting years before finally agreeing to fund his trip. Her strict instructions were to convert the Indians to Catholicism in the kindest possible way. Her life was devoted to the church, and she felt Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, with his many children and vast wealth, undermined it. A strong, fascinating woman, Isabella helped to usher in the modern age, and this rich, clearly written biography is a worthy chronicle of her impressive yet controversial life. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
