An into to the crusades that really does not say much. Although Osprey usually does a great job with their books this one was a real let down. This is not really the fault of the author, who has authored a lot of books for Osprey on this time period but the idea that you could cram a hundred years of crusades, each having different social, political, and economical reason for being into a 97 page book. Only cursory information about the Crusades is given and none of the important battles, people, or locations are given much thought. The book also suffers from repetitiveness as I think i read the exact same few sentences three or four time throughout the book. The high point of the book is the abundant images depicting artifacts and the colored maps showing the movements of the different crusades. As the book that started Osprey's Essential Histories this is not a real good example of the rest of the series, which has some very good books in it. Overall I would skip this book as it doesn't tell you anything more then the average encyclopedia. If you did want to get an intro to the crusades with some more info i would check out the books on the 1st and 3rd crusades, also by David Nicolle from Osprey's Campaign series as they are far superior books. ( )