From Publishers Weekly
Adventure writer and historian Fleming (Barrow's Boys, etc.) turns to French colonial Africa for his latest chronicle of historical (mis)adventure. His meticulous research and fascination with the physical hardships faced by men bent on discovery and conquest are on impressive display. Following the sometimes parallel, sometimes intertwining biographies of Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine, Fleming reconstructs the French colonial crusade in northern Africa that began with France's conquest of Algeria in 1830. Following a series of disgraces in the imperialist race, France needed the Sahara to resurrect its honor on the world's stage. Fleming concludes, "France was conquering Africa just for the sake of it." Foucauld and Laperrine met as soldiers during the Bou-Amama war in Algeria in 1881, and while Laperrine became a career soldier and Foucauld matured from a hedonistic womanizer into an evangelical ascetic, they remained friends until Foucauld's assassination by Muslim fundamentalists in 1916. Until their deaths (Laperrine died of thirst amid the dunes after a plane crash), the two men dedicated themselves to France's cause with zeal. As Fleming writes, "Evangelization was the mortar that imperialists hoped would turn the desert from conquered territory to complaisant colony," and while Foucauld became "a pawn in the colonial game," Fleming recognizes that most likely "he used the military as much as they used him." What emerges most notably from this dense, detailed history is Fleming's description of the colonialists flirting time and time again with a desert seemingly inimical to human life. As Fleming concludes, "The tragedy of their existences lay not so much in time as in landscape... the Sahara was the same after their deaths as before." 3 maps.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Fleming's chronicle of France's fight to cross the Sahara to colonize North Africa focuses on two men, Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine. De Foucauld is described as an aristocratic playboy turned hermit and monk. Laperrine, a shadowy figure, was the creator of the Camel Corps and was seen as a pragmatic man, violent and scheming. This story of "two extraordinary men who lived inan extraordinary place at an extraordinary time" follows Laperrine's travels across the desert between 1904 and 1909 with de Foucauld as his guide and interpreter. Drawing on many of de Foucauld's letters and other writings, Fleming describes building a cabin of palm branches, then constructing one with stones and mud; de Foucauld bitten by a horned viper (taking a month to walk again); the shortage of food and water presenting a serious problem; and a lack of hygiene causing concern. When the camels lagged, Laperrine told his men to eat them. "It was a question of sacrificing men or animals. I did not hesitate." This adventure story reads like the finest fiction. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Whether writing of the Alps, the high seas, or the North Pole, Fergus Fleming has won acclaim as one of today's most vivid and engaging historians of adventure and exploration. The Sword and the Cross takes us to the Sahara at the end of the nineteenth century, when France had designs on a hostile wilderness dominated by deadly Tuareg nomads. Two fanatical adventurers, Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine, rose to the cause of their country's national honor. Abandoning his decadent lifestyle as a sensualist and womanizer, Foucauld founded a monastic order so severe that during his lifetime it never had a membership of more than one. Yet he remained a committed imperialist and from his remote hermitage continued to assist the military. The stern career soldier Laperrine, meanwhile, founded a camel corps whose exploits became legendary. During World War I the Sahara's fragile peace crumbled. In the desert mountains Foucauld paid a tragic price for his role as imperial pawn. Laperrine, by then recalled to the Western Front, returned to avenge his friend.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Sword and the Cross takes us to the Sahara at the end of the nineteenth century, when the desert remained largely unexplored by Europeans. But France, which had seized Algeria in 1830, had designs on this hostile wilderness. Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine, two friends, were part of this conquest. The one a layabout and womanizer, the other a stern career soldier, each found his vocation in the desert. Foucauld abandoned his decadent lifestyle and founded a severe monastic order. Living off dates and barley, the gourmand became a sun-baked scarecrow, thought by many to be a saint. Yet he remained a committed imperialist, and continued to assist the military. Laperrine founded a camel corps whose exploits became legendary. Surviving on dates and water, he led his men across the desert as Foucauld, guide and interpreter, trudged along reciting prayers. When the Sahara's fragile peace crumbled during World War I, Foucauld paid a tragic price for his role as imperial pawn. Laperrine, by then recalled to the Western Front, returned to avenge his friend. A haunting narrative of a forgotten period in Europe's colonial crusade, this is also a story of hatred and friendship, discovery and delusion.

SYNOPSIS

Charles de Foucauld, a French aristocrat playboy, converted himself into the founder of an ascetic monastic order and ally of French imperialism in North Africa, alongside his friend, French military officer Henri Laperrine. Their Saharan adventures are described narratively and placed in the context of failing French imperialism in the late 1800s. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Adventure writer and historian Fleming (Barrow's Boys, etc.) turns to French colonial Africa for his latest chronicle of historical (mis)adventure. His meticulous research and fascination with the physical hardships faced by men bent on discovery and conquest are on impressive display. Following the sometimes parallel, sometimes intertwining biographies of Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine, Fleming reconstructs the French colonial crusade in northern Africa that began with France's conquest of Algeria in 1830. Following a series of disgraces in the imperialist race, France needed the Sahara to resurrect its honor on the world's stage. Fleming concludes, "France was conquering Africa just for the sake of it." Foucauld and Laperrine met as soldiers during the Bou-Amama war in Algeria in 1881, and while Laperrine became a career soldier and Foucauld matured from a hedonistic womanizer into an evangelical ascetic, they remained friends until Foucauld's assassination by Muslim fundamentalists in 1916. Until their deaths (Laperrine died of thirst amid the dunes after a plane crash), the two men dedicated themselves to France's cause with zeal. As Fleming writes, "Evangelization was the mortar that imperialists hoped would turn the desert from conquered territory to complaisant colony," and while Foucauld became "a pawn in the colonial game," Fleming recognizes that most likely "he used the military as much as they used him." What emerges most notably from this dense, detailed history is Fleming's description of the colonialists flirting time and time again with a desert seemingly inimical to human life. As Fleming concludes, "The tragedy of their existences lay not so much in time as in landscape... the Sahara was the same after their deaths as before." 3 maps. Agent, Gillon Aitken. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In this riveting story of French ambitions in the Sahara at the turn of the 20th century, freelance writer Fleming (Ninety Degrees North) focuses on two Frenchmen who hoped to conquer the desert but were instead transformed by that vast expanse of searing nothingness. Charles Foucauld was a corpulent aristocratic army officer who sought adventure in North Africa in the 1880s. Gradually, the desert took possession of his soul and transformed him into an ascetic monk who sought to bring Saharan tribesmen into the Christian fold through example. Henri Laperrine was an iconoclastic French officer whose goal was not to conquer the people of the Sahara but to earn their respect through strength and genuine friendship. In their separate ways, Foucauld and Laperrine were the best the French had to offer the Saharan culture. Inevitably, their nation's ruthless imperial ambitions doomed their struggle to conquer the Sahara, and the desert once again became the domain of the people who had lived there for thousands of years. Ably told and well researched, this telling of a unique and timely story should be in every academic and public library. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/03.]-Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews