Books like The Fourth Crusade — picked by fans

This lavishly illustrated book focuses on the crusades’ material objects: sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, architecture, coinage, and even jewelry. As historical evidence, artifacts are as important as documents, and these carefully chosen items provide privileged insights into the largely-shared crusader worldview and sense of mission. They further illuminate the complex relationships that developed between crusaders and the many foreign cultures with which they came into contact.  

There are numerous excellent books of every length (one runs more than 900 pages) that survey the crusades across the centuries and in their multiple theaters of operation. And several books are more recent, but this little book of fewer than two hundred pages is a gem. Written in clear prose and incorporating biographies of important individuals, key documents, and a glossary, it is tailor-made for students and general readers, and its price is modest. 

Hillenbrand does for counter-crusading Islam what Tyerman does for crusading Latin Christianity. This book is chock full of images of objects illustrating the rich variety of cultures embraced by medieval Islam. But beyond that, it is the single best book in English on Islam in the Age of the Crusades. Topics covered in detail, but always in a reader-friendly style, range from Muslim ethnic and religious stereotypes of Westerners to the evolution of jihad as a principle and a reality before and during the crusading era. No serious student of the crusades should overlook this important contribution to crusade studies.   

A solid grasp of crusading geography is essential for anyone who wishes to understand these complex holy wars, and this book is unsurpassed in providing such information in a clear and comprehensible manner. Its many maps and charts, each beautifully drawn and accompanied by insightful commentary and, in most cases, relevant illustrations and excerpts from primary sources, make this an indispensable resource that belongs in every crusade historian’s library. If you can find a used copy of this out-of-print treasure, buy it without hesitation. Be careful, there is another so-called atlas of the crusades out there by someone who is not a crusade historian, and it is filled with numerous errors.   

Will we ever be free of the Crusades and how it shaped our modern world? Not according to the author, who brings this idea to the forefront with a new perspective on the role that the Byzantine Empire and the fall of Constantinople in the 11th Century at the hands of western Christian crusaders wrought at the time. Personally, since this story unfolds less than a century after when my own focus on Byzantine history has been the past two years, I was fascinated by Holmes’ thoughtful interpretation of how the fading empire sitting at the center of three diverse cultural centers and their burgeoning religions, all dedicated to overt expansionism, has so often been neglected or overlooked entirely by later historians, even into the present. The Crusades were truly a “World War” at the time, and the author’s ability to connect so many diverse and related pieces of… show more.

There has been an explosion of interest in the Crusades since 9/11, with many medieval historians working hard to push back against over-simplified and often inaccurate depictions of Christian holy war and Christian-Muslim relations. This impressively researched book adds a fascinating new dimension to the story of the Crusades, examining relations between newly arrived European Catholics and the many and varied indigenous Levantine Christian communities in the decades following the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. MacEvitt rejects the dominant narrative, which held that the Frankish conquerors, imbued with the rigid prejudices of an intolerant European Christendom, had little interaction with or understanding of the local populations. Instead, he paints a portrait of a surprisingly practical and flexible Crusader regime, characterized by extensive Frankish-local social, religious, and legal interactions. MacEvitt's nuanced model, which he dubs "rough tolerance," avoids both idealization and demonization, and offers a fruitful way to approach… show more.

Not many books set in the Middle Ages manage to incorporate “contemporary” concerns within their narrative such as racism and identity – but I like this book for doing just that!

With the action moving from England to the Holy Land, this book tells the story of two very different boys – one in the service of an English knight who joins a crusading army to recapture Jerusalem from Muslim armies, the other a doctor’s apprentice who works in the camp of the Muslim commander, Saladin.

A long but absorbing read that I enjoyed for its vivid recreation of the era, and for its investigation of how the Crusades are viewed from a non-European perspective.

I’m interested in empires, Crusades, and Greeks and I found it all in this book. I admire the research and the way this past comes alive with detail. I was drawn to the detective’s sense of duty to his autocrat and yet duty to himself to find the truth. I also find it a novel way to look at religiosity because all the characters are Christians, mostly Orthodox.

Most of the Catholics are crusaders, and I’m tired of the usual heroic depiction, and after reading, I’m more satisfied with this gang of fortune-seekers who were capable of great destruction. It was believable.

William Urban is an American history professor who specializes in the Baltic Crusades. He is probably the pre-eminent English-speaking historian on this subject and has written many other books–mostly on this theme or the Teutonic Knights. I particularly enjoy his no-nonsense writing style. The book has proven invaluable in my own research as it just concentrates on the Crusade in Livonia and Estonia in the first half of the 13th century–as well as showing the other political events taking place in Germany at the time. 

Urban was a great help to my own book. He kindly read an earlier draft of Sword Brethren and gave me some crucial historical advice. He has also agreed to read the next book in the series early in 2025, and I await his opinion with anticipation.

I have always been fascinated by medieval history, but I became interested in this particular era after reading this book and learning about the German Order of Swordbrothers (Schwertbrüderorden). 

What intrigued me was that they were a small Order, not very pious or saintly. They were unorthodox and argued constantly with Bishop Albert, the leader of the Christian mission. They were a rough and ready lot, acting more like brigands than warrior monks. One of the brothers murdered the first master, and they locked up their second master when he tried to exert more control over their behavior. Over time, they were accused of almost every crime.

I loved Christiansen’s book, which opened a new world of discovery. He writes in a witty, easy-to-read style that hooked me from the beginning.