How to Plan a Crusade, Christopher Tyerman
How to Plan a Crusade, Christopher Tyerman
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
Club: $11.47

How to Plan a Crusade
Religious War in the High Middle Ages

Author: Christopher Tyerman

Narrator: Clive Chafer

Unabridged: 13 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/18/2018

Synopsis

A spirited and sweeping account of how the Crusades really worked―and a revolutionary attempt to rethink how we understand the Middle AgesThe story of the wars and conquests initiated by the first Crusade and its successors is itself so compelling that most accounts move quickly from describing the pope’s calls to arms to the battlefield. In this highly original and enjoyable new book, Christopher Tyerman focuses on something obvious but overlooked: the massive, all-encompassing, and hugely costly business of actually preparing a crusade. The efforts of many thousands of men and women, who left their lands and families in western Europe and marched off to a highly uncertain future in the Holy Land and elsewhere have never been sufficiently understood. Their actions raise a host of compelling questions about the nature of medieval society.How to Plan a Crusade is remarkably illuminating on the diplomacy, communications, propaganda, use of mass media, medical care, equipment, voyages, money, weapons, wills, ransoms, animals, and the power of prayer during this dynamic era. It brings to life an extraordinary period of history in a new and surprising way.

About Christopher Tyerman

Christopher Tyerman is professor of the history of the Crusades at the University of Oxford; fellow and tutor in history at Hertford College, Oxford; and lecturer in medieval history at New College, Oxford. He has written extensively on the Crusades in British publishing, including God’s War: A New History of the Crusades and The Debate on the Crusades. He is also the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of the Chronicles of the First Crusade.

About Clive Chafer

Clive Chafer is a professional actor, director, producer, and theater instructor. Originally from England and educated at Leeds and Exeter universities, he has performed and directed at many theaters in the San Francisco area, where he makes his home, and elsewhere in the US. In 1993 he founded TheatreFIRST, Oakland’s professional theater company, where he served as artistic director until 2008. 

Reviews

Goodreads review by Helena on April 06, 2016

This book came highly recommended and provides a wealth of valuable information for anyone interested in understanding the society that produced the crusades. Organized by topic rather than chronologically, it examines topics all too often ignored in more conventional histories from finance to healt......more

Goodreads review by Richard on August 19, 2016

Plenty of interesting nuggets, for someone like me interested in medieval crusades, but the book reads - as I assume it is - like expanded notes from a university lecture course, and I found it extremely dry in places.......more

Goodreads review by Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog on November 13, 2018

Christopher Tyerman’s How to Plan a Crusade is very much what the title tells you to expect. What was done before any of 300 years’ worth of Crusaders could get within sword’s point distance from any Sarasin, Lithuanian or whichever enemy was targeted. In general this is a readable analysis of the l......more

Goodreads review by Rindis on February 27, 2019

Despite the title, this is not a how-to book on how to get your own Crusade going. It's actually a scholarly look at how the planning of the actual Crusades worked. Tyerman identifies broad subjects in planning and looks at each one in turn, discussing what it would have taken to get a crusade to ha......more

Goodreads review by Dylan on February 01, 2023

Tyerman’s detail-intensive study of the propaganda, politics, logistics, finance, and warfare of the crusades does a fine job backing his premise that the invasions of the Levant were rational, well-planned, and at times shockingly successful. Many were failures, but non were spontaneous spurts of z......more

Quotes

“A quirky niche book that descends into obscure, even humdrum areas and makes them interesting…A pleasure.” New York Times Book Review

“An impressive and lively book, laced with wry asides and enough surprising details to pique the general reader.” Guardian (London)

“Fascinating not just for what it has to tell us about the Crusades but for the mirror it holds up to today’s religious extremism.” Mail on Sunday (London)

“His deeply researched study is dedicated to exploring the relationship between human reason and religious war in all its aspects―justification, propaganda, recruitment, finance, logistics―to show us how ‘reason made religious war possible.’” London Review of Books

“Tyerman provides a compelling, vivid sense of a lively, pragmatic, driven, and highly organized society.” Kirkus Reviews

“Intriguing. Recommended for scholars and medieval history aficionados.” Library Journal

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List