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A History of the Crusades Volume 1 The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by Steven Runciman Sir Steven Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is now being reissued. This volume deals completely with the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As Runciman says in his preface: 'Whether we regard the Crusades as the most tremendous and most romantic of Christian adventures, or as the last of the barbarian invasions, they form a central fact in medieval history. Before their inception the centre of our civilization was placed in Byzantium and in the lands of the Arab caliphate. Before they faded out the hegemony in civilization had passed to western Europe. Out of this transference modern history was born.' ' ... the best scholarly survey of the subject by a single author. It will always remain the first considerable work of its kind in the English language.' The English Historical Review Click on Image	The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen Inspired by the Pope’s call for a Holy war, Scandinavian rulers and German military monks, The Teutonic Knights, conquered and settled Finland, Estonia and Prussia, before turning on the eastern empires of Orthodox Novgorod and pagan Lithuania. These “Northern Crusades” are less celebrated than those in the Middle East , but they were also far more successful. Vast new territories became and remain Christian, while the central institutions of medieval Western Europe - churches, castles, manors, guilds, parliaments and feudal law codes - were introduces into a dark and inhospitable outer world. Now newly revised in the light of the recent developments in Baltic and Northern medieval research, this authoritative overview provides a balanced and compelling account of a tumultuous era. “A fine study of the Baltic conquest” The English Historical Review “Independent, erudite, lucid and witty …a narrative that never flags” Christopher Tyerman Click on Image
A History of the Crusades Volume 2 Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187 by Steven Runciman This volume describes the Frankish states of Outremer from the accession of King Baldwin I to the re-conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. As Runciman says in his preface, 'The politics of the Moslem world in the early twelfth-century defy straightforward analysis, but they must be understood if we are to understand the establishment of the Crusader states and the later causes of the recovery of Islam ... The main theme in this volume is warfare ... I have followed the example of the old chroniclers, who knew their business; for war was the background to life in Outremer and the hazards of the battlefield often decided its destiny.' 'I do not know when, in recent years, I have read a book which so enlarged my knowledge of and interest in a period of history ... It sets before us one of the formidable moral and romantic epics of our time, with scholarship and imagination worthy of it.' The Times Literary Supplement Click on Image	The Cathars Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages by Malcolm Barber This fascinating study of the development of radical religious belief , and its violent suppression, is the first comprehensive examination of the history of the Cathars, one of the most famous heretical movements of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Cathars were dualist heretics who, in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. They were present in most areas of Latin Christendom, but they were particularly strong in southern France and northern Italy, where they drew adherents from all social classes. They infiltrated the highest ranks of society and posed a major threat not only to the Catholic church but also to secular authorities as well. The movement was finally smashed during the Crusades and the Inquisition . The Cathars addresses several major topics in medieval history including heresy, orthodoxy and the Crusades, as well as providing a history of the social and political history of Languedoc and the rise of the Capetian dynasty. Click on Image
A History of the Crusades Volume 3 The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades by Steven Runciman In this final volume, Runciman examines the revival of the Frankish kingdom at the time of the Third Crusade until its collapse a century later. The interwoven themes of the book include: Christiandom, the replacement of the cultured Ayubites by the less sympathetic Mameluks as leader of the Moslem world, and the coming of the Mongols. He includes a chapter on architecture and the arts, and an epilogue on the last manifestations of the Crusading spirit. 'The three volumes ring with battle trumpets and drums, glitter with the splendor of noble parades, and are replete with true stories of bravery and cowardliness, rash daring and wily intrigue ... To the specialist (Runicman) offers a wealth of new interpretations ... To the layman, he tenders romance and suspense at nearly every page.' The Yale Review Click on Image	Isabella of Spain The Last Crusader (1451-1504) by William Thomas Walsh Isabella Of Spain. Called by her people Isabella la Catolica, she was by any standard one of the greatest women of all history. A saint in her own right, she married Ferdinand of Aragon, and they forged modern Spain, cast out the Moslems, discovered the New World by backing Columbus, and established a powerful central government in Spain. The story of Isabella, the great Catholic Queen, is a tale of faithful determination, ingenuity, and the power of Christian love. Walsh relates how Isabella completes the 700 year struggle for the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Moslem domination with all the drama and style of the greatest of novelists. Here is a story of intrigue and valor, brought to life by the personal revelations of one of history's truly greatest monarchs, male or female.  Click on Image
The First Crusade A New History by Thomas Asbridge In November 1095, Pope Blessed Urban II launched the First Crusade in the French city of Clermont, declaring that Christians had endured oppression and abuse at the hands of "their savage Muslim masters." He showed how Jerusalem, the epicenter of Christian tradition, lay in the grasp of Islam. The Pope called on Catholic Europe to take up arms. He urged Christian warriors to take up the sword and defend their brothers in the East who had been defeated by the Muslims, and to retake the holy city of Jerusalem, then under Islamic control and that those fighting as "soldiers of Christ" would be purified by the fire of battle. The Crusaders faced exhaustion, disease, and starvation while demonstrating a capacity for intense religious devotion. Asbridge, a British authority on the Crusades, brilliantly re-creates the three-year history of the First Crusade, chronicling its difficulties and victories, not downplaying its brutality but emphasizing its genuinely religious impulse. Click on Image	Fighting for Christendom Holy War and the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman In this excellent popular history, medieval historian Tyerman offers a short introduction to the Crusades, touching on the most salient features and helping readers understand why it's so important to ferret out from all the lore what really happened. While it's a tall order to present more than four centuries of wars spanning three continents, Tyerman rises to the task with aplomb, noting early on that "much of what passes in public as knowledge of the Crusades is either misleading or false." The Crusades were not, he says, solely wars against Islam, and their main purpose wasn't to impose Western economic or political leadership, especially since "there existed no strategic or material interest for the knights of the west to campaign in Judea." As the book's second half makes clear, the Crusades need to be understood as religious holy wars conducted by individuals who were infused by utter certainty that their actions aligned wholly with God's plan. Click on Image

The Legacy of Jihad Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims by Andrew G. Bostom Writing in 1991, the late French theologian and philosopher Jacques Ellul observed: "In a major encyclopedia, one reads phrases such as: ‘Islam expanded in the eighth or ninth centuries…’; ‘This or that country passed into Muslim hands …’ But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded …. Regarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!" The Legacy of Jihad provides extensive compilation includes Muslim theological and juridical texts, eyewitness historical accounts by both Muslim and non-Muslim chroniclers, and essays by preeminent scholars analyzing jihad war and the ruling conditions imposed upon the non-Muslim peoples conquered by jihad campaigns. The Legacy of Jihad reveals how, for well over a millennium, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—non-Muslims who were vanquished by jihad wars, became forced tributaries (called dhimmi in Arabic), in lieu of being slain. Under the dhimmi religious caste system, non-Muslims were subjected to legal and financial oppression, as well as social isolation. Jihad conquests were brutal, imperialist advances, which spurred waves of Muslims to expropriate a vast expanse of lands and subdue millions of indigenous peoples. Finally, the book examines how jihad war, as a permanent and uniquely Islamic institution, ultimately regulates the relations of Muslims with non-Muslims to this day. Click on Image

The Sword of the Prophet History, Theology, Impact on the World by Srdja Trifkovic This book examines the origin, historical record, and future implications of Islam as a global force. Political correctness is ignored for the sake of truth which is needed in This day and age of "historical ignorance" and "deliberately induced amnesia", as Mr. Trifkovic puts it. The first and second chapters examine the life of Muhammad and the creation of the Koran. The third chapter, "Jihad Without End", is simply frightening and is the most savage rebuttal of people that insist that Islam is "tolerant" or a "religion of peace".  It chronicles the spread of Islam over the last thousand years, and the massive cultural devastation and human suffering that went with it. The fourth chapter shows Islamic misogyny, use of slavery throughout the centuries, and debunks the ridiculous assertion that there was a "golden age" of Islam. The fifth chapter describes the sad and pathetic attempts of self-loathing intellectuals in North America and Western Europe that want nothing more than to tear down every Judeo-Christian tradition and belief that their country was built on. The false and twisted belief of these "enlightened" intellectuals is that all cultures and beliefs are equally valid, and to question the merits of this ideology is bigotry. The sixth chapter paints a bleak picture for Western Europe and North America. A war has been unofficially declared on the West [the "infidels"] by millions of radical Muslims, and yet many people don't even want to acknowledge that there is a problem! Click on Image