The Crusades: A Reader, Third Edition

Since its first appearance in 2004, The Crusades: A Reader has been the go-to sourcebook in the field. It covers the entire crusading movement, from its origins to its modern afterlife, using key primary source documents. Muslim, Jewish, and Byzantine voices are represented here alongside those of European Christians. The geographic range is also broad, covering not only Crusades in the Middle East, but also in Spain and in northern Europe and against European heretics.

Each reading or visual source is preceded by a short introduction to set it in context and followed by questions for discussion. The introduction to the third edition includes a guide for students on how to use the book; the new edition also features more content on women, material culture, Jewish and Byzantine perspectives, Muslim-Crusader interactions, and modern use of Crusade imagery and rhetoric by the Far Right.

While scholarship, courses, and textbooks on the Crusades have proliferated over the past twenty years, The Crusades: A Reader remains the only comprehensive, up-to-date, and in-print sourcebook available on the subject.

Emilie Amt is an emeritus professor of history at Hood College.
S.J. Allen is a medieval historian and an associate lecturer at The Open University.