Product Review

Sir Steven Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is now being reissued. This volume describes the Frankish states of Outremer from the accession of King Baldwin I to the re-conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. As Runciman says in his preface, 'The politics of the Moslem world in the early twelfth-century defy straightforward analysis, but they must be understood if we are to understand the establishment of the Crusader states and the later causes of the recovery of Islam ... The main theme in this volume is warfare ... I have followed the example of the old chroniclers, who knew their business; for war was the background to life in Outremer and the hazards of the battlefield often decided its destiny.'