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Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
I have to wonder how "authoritative" this tome really is. I am mostly unfamiliar with the literature on the subject, though. (I wonder, too, who, other than the author and/or publisher, might have made that pronouncement). The book certainly is large--808 pages! But the Crusades lasted about 200 years. I think that it is generally accepted that there were six major ones and numerous minor ones. For a work on this subject to be truly authoritative, it seems to me that it would have to be encyclopedic in breadth (literally and figuratively). Methinks that books with the titles or subtitles saying "authoritative," "definitive," et al. often are engaging in more than a little bit of salesmanship.
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Any short book (yes 800 pages is short in the context of the subject) is unlikely to be authoritative. Publishers of course excel at hyperbole. I haven't read this particular volume but over the years have read quite a bit about the subject including books on specific crusades. Steven Runciman's three volume work is very readable even though it's a bit old fashioned. A great reference is the six volume history produced by the University of Wisconsin. I used to have the series as paperbacks but all of them are available online at
http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collect...y/HistCrusades. The books are searchable and individual chapters can be downloaded as pdfs - useful if you want an academic perspective or more information on a specific incident.