I’ve long been intrigued by the Crusades. It has always struck me as an odd way to demonstrate your faith, but there is also something primal about the urge to conquer those who insult your religion. And there is so many ways to view the Crusades — most of them accurate to some degree.

Thomas Asbridge has written The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land with the aim of being as unbiased as possible. He mostly succeeds, which is remarkable. And it’s amazing how much territory he covers in one volume (though it is a long one at 784 pages).

Of course the book isn’t perfect. It recounts the Christian Crusades to conquer the Holy Land (or at least parts of it), but I’ve always felt a true study of the Crusades would need to begin with the violent aspects of the rise of Islam. Whether violent or not, Islam was going to clash with Christianity. But it was the early violent acts of Islam that gave Church leaders the platform upon which to build the Crusades. Not much of that is covered in this book.

Further still, as the Christian Crusades waned the Muslim Jihad accelerated. People forget that Muslim forces conquered Spain and were on their way to Paris before being defeated. Likewise Muslim forces captured Constantinople and nearly wiped out the Byzantine Church. And there were Muslim forces at the gates of Vienna at one point. These were not crusades in the sense that they came to conquer holy lands, but they were the inevitable backlash of the Christian aggression.

Still, those eras are not the focus of the book. And I suppose it would be three times as long if he covered them! So the book is first rate scholarship from what I can tell. And the writing is engaging. I only wish it was even broader in scope.