Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades - Jonathan Phillips

The Crusades have rarely been allowed to rest as history. Each century since the medieval campaigns ended has found fresh uses for them — romantic, imperial, theological, political — layering meaning onto events that were already complex enough on their own terms. Phillips traces both the wars themselves and their long afterlife, examining how the crusading idea was repeatedly reinvented by people who needed it to mean something other than what it was. The distance between the First Crusade and the rhetoric of modern conflict is not as great as it should be, and this book explains why.