A Concise History of the Crusades

This excellent short history of the crusades to the Holy Land rejects the notion that most crusaders’ primary motivation was mercenary rather than religious, and nicely balances military with political history. Madden interestingly discusses the difficult diversion of crusader fervor to domestic targets such as the Albigensians, and argues that the papacy’s fixation on Muslim expansion left the church vulnerable to the internal threat of Protestantism.