I finally got around to reading The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by medieval historian Thomas Asbridge. The Crusades is a sweeping, authoritative single-volume history of the holy wars fought between Western European Christians and Near Eastern Muslims from 1095 to 1291. In my humble opinion, this single volume history of the crusades is the best place to start if you want to dig into the history and learn more about the era. See it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/43YO3kH And I do think the history of the crusades is very relevant to the world of today. With ongoing conflict in the middle east, the crusades often is deployed by leaders, political pundits and propagandists on various sides of the conflict. Politicians and propagandists both distort facts for their respective arguments and pushes, and so its great to have a good foundation in the actual facts. And Asbridge does a great job of setting out the 200-year history of the crusades, from the motivations of west...
Reading and blogging about books, both non-fiction and fiction