Customer Reviews

A History of the Crusades 3 Volume Paperback Set

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This book, often published as three volumes is the definitive history of the crusades. It is at once a tremendously entertaining and gripping story, and an academically accurate account that stimulates one to further enquiry. His account is so alive it is as if one was reading events unfolding in a newspaper day by day and the destruction of Constantinople was only yesterday.

Runciman tells the story of the West's response to the fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and their unexpected success in reconquering it. Throughout the story the Christian west, the Byzantine Empire, and the Arab world are painted with all their good and bad points.

No one comes out of this story without fault, but Runciman points out that there was a tremendous invigoration of western civilization through its contact with the Byzantine and Arab world. The short lived Kingdom of Jerusalem became in a way an experiment in East-West civilization that ultimately was destroyed by the arrival of later crusaders whose enthusiasm for attacking the Arabs (with whom the earlier crusaders had learned to live in relative peace) was not matched by their numbers or competence. Runciman notes that Arab distrust of the West had its roots in this time.

A great introduction to Byzantine, Arabic, or Latin history. See also the work of JJ Norwich on Byzantium and the Normans in Sicily

I first encountered this extraordinary history back in the early '70s as a medieval student and then again some years ago beyond study and therefore with considerably more money-at least compared to a student-and I was able to purchase this wonderful set.

I freely admit not having read the three volumes cover to cover but have parachuted in to various topics within the span of information covered by the set and I can attest to the brilliance of Runciman's writing. He represents the best of historical writing in that he is the undoubted master of his sources and their subject matter but he can also convey the extraordinary complexity of these centuries in a writing style that is at once understandable and also colourful. To my mind he is the best of the best because, as undoubted master of his subject, he is also able to tease out and convey the human interest, the drama and the wrenching saddness of all that was the Crusades.

Steven Runciman has transcended history as few other historians of any time have been able to do. He has imbued the structure of history with the richness of a night at the opera or theatre-the reader is presented with the panoply of humanness at every turn and I believe this is the true mark of a master's hand.

These books were written in the '50s but they're still the best for a general history of the Crusades. Steven Runciman has a real way of explaining events so that they make sense. The first book covers the First Crusade, the second one covers the Kingdom of Jerusalem from it's establishment at the end of the First Crusade to it's destruction just before the Third Crusade, and the final book covers the Third Crusade through the fall of the last of the Crusader states. His interpretation of the personalities involved is still the best available. Some of his details are out of date, and a few of his ideas have been disproved as new data comes to light, but on the whole it has remained accurate. He is primarily a Byzantine history writer which means that he has rather a strong Byzantine slant to it, but this gives him some insight into the motivation of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus which helps make more sense of some subsequent events. The books may be populist but they include a lot of facts, and it's hard to keep track of the names sometimes. Fortunately, with all this information spread out over three books it's less condensed than some of those one volume histories out there. Also, the fact that it doesn't end with the Third or Fourth Crusade and continues on throughout the life of the kingdoms in the Holy Land makes it useful to see how the crusades affected medieval life after the last of the famous crusades. Runciman is a traditionalist unfortunately, so any crusades that take place after the fall of Acre are only briefly covered and the same for crusades outside the Holy Land.

This book is a very nice edition. It comes in a slipcase with the picture of a knight engraved in gold. The books are very well bound and large. This set will take up a lot of room on your shelf.

Steven Runciman was a classic English eccentric, a child of wealth and family influence who dabbled in the occult, gambled in Las Vegas and frequented the palaces and courts of kings. He was close friends with George Orwell and Aldous Huxley! Over the course of his colorful 97 year life, he also happened to become a remarkable historian.

Runciman mastered Latin and Greek while a small child and later acquired a working knowledge of Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and French. After receiving a large inheritance, Runciman resigned from his fellowship at Cambridge and began travelling widely, mostly in the middle east and spent a few years teaching at Istanbul University. It was during this time that he started research on this massive undertaking, completing this trilogy back in the early 1950's.

With this publication, Runciman has fleshed out the multitude of characters and depicted monumental events in a straightforward narrative which chronologically follows the conflicts. He does this with a very even hand - with the Christians of the western Europe, the Byzantines and the Arabs getting both praised and chastised for their various actions.

The medieval period found the political, cultural, economic and religious differences and relationships in the Holy Lands even more complex than they are today. It was a time when there were few central governments, countless competing noble families, priests, military orders, religious sects and tribes that could -and did - form alliances or betray friends and allies, very suddenly. In addition, the combination of perpetual violence, lethal diseases and rudimentary medical care made life expectancies short, and determining the rightful heir to various fortunes, kingdoms and military power was always shifting like the desert sands.

Runciman makes this perpetual and deadly game very clear in his presentation, especially in chapters dealing with life in Outremer. While this is a comprehensive and highly detailed history, it is a compelling and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the middle ages and the struggles for control of the Holy Lands. He does a magnificent job of bringing the characters to life and the military realities of the Crusades into brutal focus.

Sadly, the contemporary disagreements between Christians, Jews, the Eastern Orthodox church, Sunni and Shia Muslims remind us of the lessons that are still to be learned from such histories.

This is an excellent piece of work. If I could find any fault with it, it would be that it is too detailed. It almost gives you too much information about the participants, no matter how minor they are. It would have also been very helpful if it somehow related the names of old places to new. You have to be very knowledgeable about old geography and names to follow the story without stopping and checking old maps against the new.