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The Crusades
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Why would Europeans around 1100 travel thousands of miles to seize the Holy Land, and why did the campaign keep going for two centuries? This book explores the mix of religious zeal, hostility toward people of other faiths, and sheer ambition that drove these expeditions. It also follows their lasting effects on the wider world.
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Along the way it introduces a cast of vivid figures and shows how the wars helped reshape warfare and move European society away from feudal estates toward emerging nations and empires. The author also reflects on the cruelty committed in religion's name, and on how many modern Christians judge the episode as fanaticism. That verdict, the book argues, is accurate yet incomplete, and it sets out to tell the fuller account.
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