The story of how a group of warriors, driven by faith, greed and wanderlust, carved out new Christian-ruled states in the Middle East is one of the most extraordinary of all epics. The crusaders' stunning initial success started a sequence of great Crusades, each with its own story, that fundamentally shaped the Christian and Muslim worlds for two centuries, until the last Crusader castles were finally expunged. The energy and commitment that sent army after army into the eastern Mediterranean also led to the invasion and conversion of Central and Baltic Europe, Spain, Portugal, the destruction of the Cathars in Provence and the settlement of America. Told with great verve and authority, "God's War" is the definitive account of a fascinating but also horrifying story. "We are still living with the images and legends of the crusades...Tyerman tells us how the Church set about preaching the crusades, exploiting the perennial pessimism and guilt of the European nobility of the Middle Ages. He shows how crusading ideology penetrated the religious sensibility of the period, as well as its secular fiction and poetry...Of all the modern histories of the crusades it is the shrewdest, the most reliable and the most complete. " - "The Spectator".
God's War: A New History of the Crusades
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This is likely to replace Steven Runciman's 50-year-old History of the Crusades as the standard work. Tyerman (England and the Crusades), lecturer in medieval history at Oxford University, demolishes our simplistic misconceptions about that series of ferocious campaigns in the Middle East, Muslim Spain and the pagan Baltic between 1096 and 1500. Abjuring sentimentality and avoiding clichés about a rapacious West and an innocent East, Tyerman focuses on the crusades' very human paradoxes: "the inspirational idealism; utopianism armed with myopia; the elaborate, sincere intolerance; the diversity and complexity of motive and performance." The reader marvels at the crusaders' inextinguishable devotion to Christ even while shuddering at their delight in massacring those who did not share that devotion. In the end, Tyerman says, what killed crusading was neither a lack of soldierly enthusiasm nor its failure to retain control of Jerusalem, but the loss of Church control over civil societies at home and secular authorities who felt that religion was not sufficient cause for war and that diplomacy was a more rational method of deciding international relations. God's War is that very rare thing: a readable and vivid history written with the support of a formidable scholarly background, and it deserves to reach a wide audience. 16 color illus. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
Christopher Tyerman...has written a tome that...draws on the most recent scholarship and offers fresh insights, demolishing myths galore.--A. G. Noorani"Frontline" (05/04/2007)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Rodge
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
This is a comprehensive and authoritative work that focuses more on analysis and consideration of the whys and wherefores of crusading than it does on providing a coherent narrative. Therefore, this is not the work to pick up if you're looking for a narrative history of the crusades. Rather this is what you pick up if you know a fair bit about the crusades and are interested in some philosophical discourse with your history.
Tyerman is not an easy writer to read, and part of this, I think it's fair to say, is because he is a dull writer. He is perhaps a worthy thinker, but not one of those thinkers who can communicate his thoughts particularly well.
That being said, this is a work that contains great expertise and knowledge. If you have a deep interest in the crusades, this book will be worth reading. If your interest is more casual, or you wish for more of a narrative history than a meditation on the causes and philosophical and religious underpinnings of the crusades, you may wish to look elsewhere.
Tyerman is not an easy writer to read, and part of this, I think it's fair to say, is because he is a dull writer. He is perhaps a worthy thinker, but not one of those thinkers who can communicate his thoughts particularly well.
That being said, this is a work that contains great expertise and knowledge. If you have a deep interest in the crusades, this book will be worth reading. If your interest is more casual, or you wish for more of a narrative history than a meditation on the causes and philosophical and religious underpinnings of the crusades, you may wish to look elsewhere.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Prairie Pal
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
With the publication of "God's War" Christopher Tyerman becomes the new paramount authority on the history of the crusading movement. Stephen Runciman's old but entertaining work has now been eclipsed and its flaws are exposed. Tyerman is extremely valuable and provocative on both the motives for the crusades (which he sees as rooted more in ideology than greed, land-hungry younger sons or European imperialism) and for their effects on the states that participated. This account will stand for years as the yardstick by which other books on the crusades will be measured.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Jack Blatant
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
Christopher Tyerman clearly intends for this work to become the new standard, replacing Sir Steven Runciman's three-volume history of the Crusades; however, he falls short of the mark. Although Tyerman's opus contains some useful updates in the field, he cannot lay claim to greater objectivity than Runciman. Instead, his bias reflects the way in which British scholars of the Crusades have turned from Runciman's love of Byzantium towards a new tepid apologia for the Crusaders themselves. Tyerman also lacks Runciman's beautiful writing style, frequently losing himself (and the reader) in awkward sentences which beg for further editing. Runciman provides a clear, year by year narrative of events while Tyerman jumps episodically in time and space.
A further objection to the idea of this book as the new standard is the fact that other, better single volume works have been written already - both Jonathan Riley-Smith's and H.E. Mayer's (in translation). Tyerman's book is useful as an update and a weathervane within the field of the history of the Crusades, but Christopher Tyerman is no Steven Runciman.
A further objection to the idea of this book as the new standard is the fact that other, better single volume works have been written already - both Jonathan Riley-Smith's and H.E. Mayer's (in translation). Tyerman's book is useful as an update and a weathervane within the field of the history of the Crusades, but Christopher Tyerman is no Steven Runciman.
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Most recent customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
This is why I hated history in high school
I just finished this book after seeing it referred to as the new standard after Runciman's aging 3 volume history of the crusades. Read more
Published 18 months ago by dehall
4.0 out of 5 stars
very good book on crusade history
This is a very good book on crusader history. The author has deep/unbiased knowledge on european history around crusading era. Read more
Published on May 12 2008 by Ganwoong Kim
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