Customer Reviews
God help us all - By: A. Naish, 03 Oct 2008 
I'm a great fan of the "very short introduction" series, publishedin a nice pocketable format & covering a huge range of topics. But editor & author must take heavy blame for this impenetrable monstrosity.
As pointed out by a previous reviewer, this book was written originally for a knowledgeable audience & has been simply rebranded as an "introduction". It isn't. Not a bit of it. Tyerman races through the events of the crusades & then attempts a long & excessively detailed analysis of their genesis & impact.
I consider this rebranding act pretty poor form on the part of OUP. But looking at the text, one starts to wonder who could have found even that original work an enjoyable read. The sentences are interminable & full of incongruous & utterly preposterous metaphors. I've plucked a (believe it or not) representative sentence from Tyerman's labyrinthine prose.
"Although the rulers' rhetoric spoke differently, with popes, politicians, & chroniclers presenting a particular frontier myth of heroic conquest & battle to justify the Franks' presence & excite Western support, Outremer society, while sustained by this cohesive ideology of 'exiles' for the faith, reflected a far more humdrum diversity of experience than such crude caricatures allow."
Well thanks for clearing that up Chris.
Tyerman is writing this as a work of high literaturein itself & it is writing to be ashamed of. Academic or not, & I was till recently an academic myself, the purpose of writing for others must be to explain & to elucidate. When writers resort to pretentious obfuscation one is drawn only to the conclusion there simply isn't very much to explain.
I won't give up on the v.s.i. series since I've had plenty of good experiences as well (the first world war introductionin particular is excellent). But I must register my strongest condemnation for this title, for its author (I feel quite sorry for his studentsin Oxford), & for the feeble work of its editors at OUP. Avoid at all costs!
An interminable Introduction - By: P. M. Buttigieg, 07 Jul 2008 I purchased this title expecting, as it says on the cover, a short introduction to the crusades; an overview of the wars with possibly some academic insight into their principal causes, after effects & enduring legacy.
Instead Tyerman, spends one chapter giving an "A Ridiculously short introduction" to the crusades. The rest of the book is both disjointed & lacks flow. Although the introduction is Academic, it is badly written with long laborious sentences often describing the most trivial of events. Considering that the target audience are far from being experts on the subject but rather casual readers seeking either (1) Knowledge of a subject which they know little (2) An introduction into a subject on which they want to learn more (3) A refresher on a subject which they have studiedin the past, this book is the complete opposite of the entertaining, factual account of the crusades, sought by these readers.
I am possible being slightly harshin my rating. However the fact that I took a whole month to struggle through a "very short introduction", to me, defeats the purpose of this book. Not only this, but I also felt like putting itin the toaster every time I read 5 pages of it!!
Holy men at war - By: Peter Reeve, 19 Aug 2007 
Part of the continuing fascination with the Crusades is due to the belief that we are still fighting them, that they precipitated a Christian/Islamic conflictin which we are still caught up. Truth tends to be much more complex & multi-layered than myth, which is indeed why we prefer the latter. But if you would like to get at the former, Tyerman's book is a good place to start. The most important lessons are to do with scope & context. The Crusades were much more than a series of military expeditions by Europeans to the Holy Land, they lasted for far longer than the two centuries we usually credit them with, & the wars between Christian & Islamic nations had older & deeper roots. Nor are their consequences widely understood. As this book makes clear, the Crusades had far more impact on Europe, & far less on the Near East, than is usually thought.
This Very Short Introduction is actually a reprint of Tyerman's hardback Fighting for Christendom (used, cheap copies of which, at the time of writing this review, are still available on Amazon, so you might want to check that out). One consequence is that, at over 150 pages, it's longer than mostin the series. Also, I think they must have simply shrunk the illustrations to fit on the page, so that you need a magnifying glass to read some of the maps.
The early chapters give an excellent overview of the subject. The later chapters, examining the impact & significance of the Crusades, & being therefore more interpretive, are somewhat heavy going at times. The author's style is good, but may be slightly too academic for some readers. And he is occasionally prone to colourful moral judgments, such as when he talks of Himmler's 'historically illiterate ghouls' relying on 'rancid imagination'. I may well share this view, but I will arrive at it myself, thank you very much.
This remains an excellent introduction to a hugely important subject, & is a worthy addition to the series.
Good if overly-academic - By: Andrew, 31 May 2007 
Tyerman's The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction was not,in fact written to be a very short introduction, & was first prublished as "Fighting for Christendom"in 2004. This is where the problem seems to lie. Repackaged as a VSI, it attracts new & general readers who expect it to be what it says on the cover. They then have to battle with this overly-academic text. I am sure this book is perfectly brillantin itself, but it doesn't really work as a very short introduction. The writer asumes, fairly enough as it seems he didn't know it would become a VSI, a good knowledge of medevial history, academic terms & world geography. This clearly alienates some, like me, who thought it would be a much simpler read as the title suggests: easing you in, rather than jumpingin head first.
However, the books is still actually really quite good. Speaking as someone who knows next to nothing about medevial history & is not familar with every academic term under the sun, the book was still very informative & interesting. There is no doubt if you are like me you will sometimes have to battle with paragraphs to grasp meaning, but somehow things did fall into place. Tyerman is clearly an expert who makes some very intriguing pointsin historography, seeking to dispell misconceptions, as a result of what must be extensive research & a genuine interest for the topic. Let's put it this way: criticism aside, I can't deny I enjoyed reading it.
Difficult, not exactly a very short introduction, but most definitely good.
Fascinating and surprisingly comprehensive - By: J. Aitcheson, 11 Mar 2007 I am a big fan of the idea behind the Very Short Introduction series, & the wayin which they provide informationin an easily accesible manner with plenty of scope for further reading. "The Crusades" by Christopher Tyerman is one of its best examples. It is dense material, admittedly, but very readable at the same time.
This is not only a narrative of the events of each crusade but also an exploration of the very idea of the crusade, how it developed, its historical context, the mechanics of how it was decreed & promoted, who went on crusade, how these expeditions were financed. Tyerman briefly touches as well on what life was likein the Holy Land, & the relationship of the Christian colonists to the Muslims. He also examines how similar crusading ideas were applied not just to the Holy Land but also to the pagan lands of the Baltic & the Spanish Reconquista.
For a book that is less 150 pages long, Tyerman thus does a fantastic job of covering the crusadesin detail from many different angles. It is certainly less daunting, as well more digestible, than some of the massive tomes (sometimes over 1000 pages) which exist about the crusades. To place the wealth of informationin context, the book includes a good number of maps & illustrations, while a list of further reading at the back means that it is possible to follow up on many of the interesting points that Tyerman raises.
In short, this is a brilliantly engaging & surprisingly comprehensive introduction, ideal for both students of medieval history & the casual reader.
