A Grand Endeavour
I actually finished my first book on the Crusades: Iron Men and Saints by Harold Lamb. Enjoyed it a great deal and I'm proud as this is the first non-fiction book I've finished completely in a long long time.
This book primarily covered the First Crusade.
The Crusades are always something that gets thrown around a lot, especially when anti-Christians are trying to beat back Christians from their assumed moral high ground. They use it as an example of how the bad ol' Christians went around and did bad things and the Crusaders did do some bad things...ok...a lot of bad things. But what I wasn't aware of, at least consciously, is how much significance the Crusades had on our history...and by "our" I mean us white/Anglo/European types. It wasn't just a bunch of rampaging Christians going off to slaughter innocent Muslims, though they did do that and the Muslims in their turn too. But without this spontaneous, audacious war/migration of Europeans, that continent probably would have remained mired in the dark ages a lot longer. So when you knock the Crusaders, remember that you probably wouldn't be where your at if it wasn't for them...at least if your of European descent
Anyway...I'm going to start on the second one :)