The Crusades: A Reader, Second Edition: 8 (Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures) - Softcover

Allen and Amt have dusted off the Crusades from the relics shelf of European history and have brought the conflict into a new age of scholarship, making use of a multifaceted, multicultural perspective of great value in our interconnected world where an understanding of cultural context is so vital. -- Comitatus The book's beauty lies in its documentation of relevant and important primary sources from both Christian as well as Muslim sources. Moreover, after documenting the sources it neither judges nor analyses; rather, at the end of almost each document it encourages readers to engage more with it and poses some important questions, such as why, what, how, and when. -- Journal of Human and Society

Since the publication of the first edition of The Crusades: A Reader, interest in the Crusades has increased dramatically, fueled in part by current global interactions between the Muslim world and Western nations. The second edition features an intriguing new chapter on perceptions of the Crusades in the modern period, from David Hume and William Wordsworth to World War I political cartoons and crusading rhetoric circulating after 9/11. Islamic accounts of the treatment of prisoners have been added, as well as sources detailing the homecoming of those who had ventured to the Holy Land-including a newly translated reading on a woman crusader, Margaret of Beverly. The book contains sixteen images, study questions for each reading, and an index.