Reviews
As hot desert winds to cobwebs, Nicholas Morton's bold, vital and urgent global history of the Crusades blows the old parochial Western accounts clean away
Nicholas Morton is a prolific and distinguished scholar of the Crusades whose work continues to reflect a sustained commitment to bringing the history of the medieval world to a broader readership
An innovative take on the early Crusades, firmly situating them within the broader medieval Near East. Approaching from over a dozen individual perspectives (empress, sultan, princess, nobleman, patriarch, assassin) Nicholas Morton weaves a dizzying array of contexts into a coherent whole, one in which the Crusades become an integral piece of a larger civilizational story. In these pages complexity reigns: adversaries become allies, political and religious interests intertwine, and fanaticism and avarice give way to tolerance and friendship - and back again. Challenging binary notions of Muslim-Christian, right-wrong, and good-bad
A thoroughly-researched view of the Crusades from a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious perspective - a superb history narrative for the twenty-first century
A refreshing and astutely judged book. Morton delivers an extensively researched and fast-paced account of the struggle for the Holy Land. Too often, histories of the crusades are one-dimensional but this book places the Crusader States in their true perspective, crashing their way into the heart of a region packed with complexities and contradictions. Morton confidently steers us through a fabulous cast of characters within the region's myriad Muslim and Eastern Christian powerbrokers. Informative and immensely enjoyable
Gripping and authoritative ... Drawing upon a rich array of sources, it brings the crusades to life in vivid detail