The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East

As hot desert winds to cobwebs, Nicholas Morton's bold, vital and urgent global history of the Crusades blows the old parochial Western accounts clean away
Gripping and authoritative ... Drawing upon a rich array of sources, it brings the crusades to life in vivid detail
A refreshing and astutely judged book. Morton delivers an extensively researched and fast-paced account of the struggle for the Holy Land. Too often, histories of the crusades are one-dimensional but this book places the Crusader States in their true perspective, crashing their way into the heart of a region packed with complexities and contradictions. Morton confidently steers us through a fabulous cast of characters within the region's myriad Muslim and Eastern Christian powerbrokers. Informative and immensely enjoyable
A thoroughly-researched view of the Crusades from a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious perspective - a superb history narrative for the twenty-first century
Nicholas Morton is a prolific and distinguished scholar of the Crusades whose work continues to reflect a sustained commitment to bringing the history of the medieval world to a broader readership
An innovative take on the early Crusades, firmly situating them within the broader medieval Near East. Approaching from over a dozen individual perspectives (empress, sultan, princess, nobleman, patriarch, assassin) Nicholas Morton weaves a dizzying array of contexts into a coherent whole, one in which the Crusades become an integral piece of a larger civilizational story. In these pages complexity reigns: adversaries become allies, political and religious interests intertwine, and fanaticism and avarice give way to tolerance and friendship - and back again. Challenging binary notions of Muslim-Christian, right-wrong, and good-bad