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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best atlas of the crusades,
By
This review is from: The Atlas of the Crusades (Cultural Atlas of) (Hardcover)
Twenty-one historians under the guidance of Jonathan Riley-Smith have provided us with an invaluable resource for the crusades. This atlas offers 150+ pages of beautiful maps punctuated with painstaking detail -- geographical features, historical dates, battle sites, travel routes, castles & fortresses, monasteries & holy sites, cities & towns -- all set against the backdrop of splendid color plating. The expeditions to the holy lands (1095-1291 CE) are charted in great detail, as well as the campaigns in Spain and the Baltic region. This provides for a collective 500-year time period (1000's-1500's CE) of the crusades. One's knowledge of medieval Christendom and the Islamic world will be strengthened beyond measure by this handsome tome. It reflects highly specialized research and is a tool for students and professors alike. Definitely worth $40.00
Riley-Smith is today's top crusades historian whose works have rivaled even Runciman's three-volume classic. Four textual sections in the atlas briefly present Riley-Smith's newer theories which depict crusaders as zealous pilgrims (not colonial boors), motivated by ideology (more than land and booty). There were few rewards to be won in Palestine, people knew it, and the costs involved in embarking on a crusade were astronomical. We certainly don't accept the crusading world-view today, but we are obligated to understand it and describe it as accurately as we can. Riley-Smith has done so, and this atlas stands as a monument to his scholarship of the past three decades.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The maps are great, but this book has so much more!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Atlas of the Crusades (Cultural Atlas of) (Hardcover)
The maps are wonderful. They are well-researched and provide an overview of the Crusades, along with all the peripheral things going on in the world of the Middle Ages. The text gives a good objective summary of events, which is difficult to find elsewhere in sources on the Crusades. Riley-Smith has chosen his topics well, including aspects of specific cultures of the time. He achieves a vivid picture of the political, economic, and social life of the time in all of the world's hot spots. This perhaps does not give the most comprehensive picture possible, since it does not take into account conflicting primary sources on the Crusades, but Riley-Smith achieves his goal. Readers looking for more information can easily find other sources; the Atlas of the Crusades is an excellent supplement to these and does a good job pulling them together.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of the Best,
By
This review is from: The Atlas of the Crusades (Cultural Atlas of) (Hardcover)
"The Atlas of the Crusades" is one of my all time favorite books. While it's enormously helpful to the specialist, the book is also a perfect introduction to the Crusades -- visually describing this interesting historical phenomenon from beginning to end. Beyond the route maps which can be found in every atlas of the Middle Ages, this book has everything from birds-eye views of Acre and Constantinople to the layout of Crusader castles, churches, and villages, to a schematic diagram of the Mamluk Chain of Command. You can't go wrong adding this to your library.
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