Father Brown -- Salome -- Genghis Khan

"GENGHIS KHAN" has all the appurtenances of a genuine history book. Not only has it a Latin quotation prefixed to it but it has also a whole separate section of notes and a very full bibliography. It has managed, however, to escape the customary heavy historical style and reads suspiciously like a historical novel rather than a genuine history. And Mr. Lamb has seen fit to omit substantiating footnotes.

The book has not succeeded in convincing the reviewer that it is genuine, scientifically historical work. In any case, it has all the earmarks of popularized history with some genuine historical paraphernalia attached. Let it not be gathered from the above that the reviewer did not enjoy reading the book in hand, for that would be very far from the truth. The story of Genghis Khan, the struggles of his childhood, the hardships of his early manhood, his growing success, and finally his great achievements culminating in the acquisition of an empire stretching from China to Arabia, could not fail to be interesting. Mr. Lamb's style, while not distinguished, is thoroughly adequate for the subject. It is fluent and easy to read, although the author has a rather distressing habit of omitting the verb from short sentences from time to time, a la francaise.

There are numerous illustrations in the book. They are all interesting, but are not, as a rule, strictly relevant to the text. In commenting on this fact and on the lack of substantiating footnotes, the reviewer is fully aware of the difficulty of obtaining authoritative matter strictly relevant to the particulars of the subject in hand. For it must be remembered that the Mongol of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were for the most part illiterate. Most of the contemporary accounts of Genghis Khan must be sought in works in Chinese and Persian.

Mr. Lamb has given us a colorful and stirring account of the career of a great conqueror, and if we may criticize the lack of documentation, we must remember the intrinsic difficulty of the subject and be thankful for a thoroughly readable account of what in other hands might be a very heavy subject.