There's these geezers, see... (Crusades - Terry Jones, Alan Ereira)

Member Name: pan

Product:	Crusades - Terry Jones, Alan Ereira
Date:	15/02/02 (155 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Informative, funny, engaging

Disadvantages: Quite brief in places

The Crusades are ancient history, which feels as though it's repeating itself these days. Ever wonder how history will judge the latest 'coalition against terrorism'? The battle of the religions may now be cloaking more mundane economic factors (like oil production), but in this respect we are merely echoing the Crusades again.

All of this sounds deadly earnest, (which it is), but this book manages to put things over with a real combination of good humour, understatement and telling analysis. The humour's the thing that grabs you the most. Terry Jones is better known as one of the Monty Python team, but his post-Python projects have been worth checking out too.

Here he and his co-author cover quite a wide range of material, so it's fairly light at times. Some of the quick biogs of the main villains are pretty good, and there's no doubt that they've done their homework. If one of the aims of the book is to make you want to find out more than it succeeds admirably.

I didn't catch the TV series on which the book is based, but somehoe I didn't feel that this was important. This isn't just the book of the TV series, it stands alone as a fine bit of populist historical writing.

Read it. I swear you've not read any history book like it...

Summary: