Rating: 
Summary: Propaganda? Make no mistake about it?
Review: Readers and viewers of this work should realize that history contains ugly realities to anyone's perspectives. Certainly, the Moorish hordes relegated Christians and Jews to Dimi status (mostly as a sort of tax strategy), looted, enslaved, and killed masses just like the crusaders, but THIS ISN'T A BOOK ABOUT THE ARABS!!!This same sort of 'prejuidcial history' is leveled against Noam Chomsky for his history of the Arab Israeli conflict and his focus on Israel and the U.S. As with critics of Chomsky, you should note that the author of the previous review makes no mention of the facts presented in the book. Why? Because he cannot refute them. Instead he accuses the authors of apologetic propaganda; exactly the exercise in which he is involved.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book for an interesting topic
Review: Terry Jones managed, with this book to give a first time reader much sought after information about the crusades. Including his usual touch of humour, Jones is able to show some of the funnier sides of the whole affair. The book also gives views from the arab side of the conflict and introductions on some of the crusades personalities. A book easy to read and gain knowledge from it would interest anyone and useful for students researching the topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Left out the first half of the story
Review: The Crusades DVD leaves out the half of the story where a man known as a prophet named Mohammed comes to town and says "Wage war against infidels" is his holy book, the islamic Koran. He commands them to fight and subjugate other people. So they go into half of Europe and take over the Balkans and Spain, setting the stage for eons of bloodshed that continue today. Then over several hundred years the Christians drive them out of their land. At this point, in walks Terry Jones's DVD and declares the evil Christians barbarians against the noble muslim. It doesn't surprise me that a band of Germans sacked constantinople in light of their deeds in the 20th Century. Near Eastern Christians are ignored in textbooks too for lack of time and space to discuss them. What is emphasized most strongly is the moral superiority of "natives," non-Christians, and nontraditional Christians. Secondly, the victimization of culturally superior Moslems by ethnocentric Westerners whose crudeness is equaled only by their love of violence and cunning. Lastly, any questioning of this thesis is dismissed as racism. Jones's strongly antiwar BBC series praised Baibar's use of slave troops against the crusaders. What would he have said if crusaders had adopted that practice? On the whole, Jones is far the better scholar (and arguably the better actor), but he remains a child of the sixties--like so many of us who are active teachers today. (William Urban, Monmouth College) Besides the Catholics there were other bands of mystic Christians during the Middle Ages whose milder history is never told because of the inquisition's burning of books. Jones ridicules Christian's beliefs and All in all is is a very simplified and politically-correct view of history. Try this book instead: Billings, Malcolm. The Crusades: Five Centuries of Holy Wars, Sterling, 1996. (Published in England as The Cross and the Crescent.)
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not very informative
Review: The former members of Monty Phyton seem to be keen on traveling. Michael Palin travelled around the world in 80 days and from pole to pole, and in his book CRUSADES, Terry Jones takes us to the medevial middle-east.His history of the first crusades is quiet entertaining, especially if you like pythonesque humor. However, the background information appears a bit weak. Recommended if you don't have any previous information on the subject, if you are looking for in-depth information, you should turn to other sources
Rating:
Summary: Skip this one if you are looking for a good balance.
Review: The Introduction says it all: "We make no pretensions of extending the bounds of scholarship": they certainly don't; the supporting documentation appears on the weak side. "For those who want to read more there is plenty": correct! Skip this one if you are looking for a serious, well-supported, well-balanced and unbiased treatment of the subject. The style is definitely too journalistic; some of the opinions expressed by the authors (e.g. on the Church, on the French, on the aristocracy) are patronising and give the appearance of having been poorly researched. Lastly, towards the end the events and names reported tend to get increasingly confusing.
Rating:
Summary: A rather intrigueing mix of history, humor, and religion.
Review: This book makes a wonderful companion to the video series by the same name. Terry Jones does a great job of showing us, the layman, how bizzarely we, as people, acted and still do act, somtimes, in the name of religion. I quite enjoyed how he combines historical research with his own style of humor, thus making the book more readable to the average person. True, the book could have had more historical facts in it, but it would have distracted from an enjoyable and thought provoking story and would have read like a bad highschool textbook. This would make a good learning tool for students new to the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Politically correct, funny, and informative.
Review: This documentary is so funny, it is almost cruel. After all, the Crusades were very serious affairs (God, country, heathens, invasions, and so on), so what is Terry Jones of "Monty Python" fame doing here, leading the new barbarians of the West in a Quest for the Greater Glory of God and a little bit of plunder? Well, he, and the whole BBC-A&E production team, are taking us to a journey Eastward, retracing the steps of the medieval pilgrim-soldiers, ignorant peasants and nobles alike who invaded Levant because they were religious zealots, greedy, and unscrupulous. Does this sound a bit one-sided? It is, and that is the only problem with this very entertaining and educational documentary: in their attempt to be fair to the Arab/Moslem side, the producers have ended up taking sides, which is not very susprising since the historical bulk comes from the late Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most respected and most widely read historians of the Crusades, whose bias against the "Franks" and for the Byzantines, is evident once one reads his great "History of the Crusades." Jonathan Riley-Smith attempts to balance the story with his commentaries, and it is no secret that his sympathies are with the Crusaders, but the program is structured in such a way that not even Riley-Smith's input saves it from being tilted. Terry Jones is simply outstanding with his British (Welsh) accent and deadpan humor as the perfect guide in this tour.
The Crusades were far more complicated than the simplistic Bad Guys (ignorant Europeans/Christians) against the Good Guys (enlightened Arabs/Moslems) picture would make us believe. Historical perspective helps us see the Crusades as a chapter in the (sometimes quite deadly) embrace of two world religions. Long periods of peace are punctuated by terrible periods of war and invasion. The Moslems got the ball rolling when they invaded the Christian lands of North Africa, Spain, and the Bizantine Empire. It took a while for the Christians to counterattack (just as it took a --shorter-- while for the Moslems to react to the Crusaders). When the Christians finally went on the offensive, their timing was not the best, and their choice of tactics was very questionable. Christendom was extremely intolerant back then, so everybody who was not a Christian, and many who were the "wrong" kind of Christian, were immediately suspect and dealt with mercilessly. What the program fails to mention is that Europe always had voices of dissent, and not all Crusaders were murdering barbarians, as not all Popes were conniving greedy zealots. The program also fails to provide the true historical setting of the Crusades: after the Crusaders were defeated, the Moslem world advanced into Europe from the East and South, and it remained in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula) until the late 15th century. It was not until the late 17th century that the Ottoman Turks retreated from the siege of Vienna. The Crusades were a chapter in this stormy relationship of European Christianity and Islam. The producers of the documentary would have served their viewers better by being less politically correct. The slef-flagellation is appropiate and even funny in the hands of Terry Jones, but sometimes too much of a good thing is just too much.
Still, "Crusades" is an excellent program, mostly because I am sure it will interest people who otherwise would have never bothered with medieval history or the Crusades in particular. This documentary is the perfect place to start a healthy interest in history. I also recommend (in book format) Steven Runciman's "History of the Crusades" 3 volumes (try to get the Folio Society Edition: the prints are in color and the binding is superb); "The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades," and "The Atlas of the Crusades," both edited by Riley-Smith; "The Cross and the Crescent," by Malcolm Billings; "The Dream and the Tomb," by Robert Payne; "The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe," edited by George Holmes; and "The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages," edited by Norman F. Cantor. For an interesting thesis that I find flawed, check Karen Armstrong's "Holy War." For a magnificent history of Islam, nothing better than "Islam: Art and Architecture," edited by Hattstein and Delius. And anything written by Professor Bernard Lewis on Islam, the Arabs, the Turks, the Jews, or the Middle East in general, is uniformly good.
Rating:
Summary: Politically correct, funny, and informative.
Review: This documentary is so funny, it is almost cruel. After all, the Crusades were very serious affairs (God, country, heathens, invasions, and so on), so what is Terry Jones of "Monty Python" fame doing here, leading the new barbarians of the West in a Quest for the Greater Glory of God and a little bit of plunder? Well, he, and the whole BBC-A&E production team, are taking us to a journey Eastward, retracing the steps of the medieval pilgrim-soldiers, ignorant peasants and nobles alike who invaded Levant because they were religious zealots, greedy, and unscrupulous. Does this sound a bit one-sided? It is, and that is the only problem with this very entertaining and educational documentary: in their attempt to be fair to the Arab/Moslem side, the producers have ended up taking sides, which is not very susprising since the historical bulk comes from the late Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most respected and most widely read historians of the Crusades, whose bias against the "Franks" and for the Byzantines, is evident once one reads his great "History of the Crusades." Jonathan Riley-Smith attempts to balance the story with his commentaries, and it is no secret that his sympathies are with the Crusaders, but the program is structured in such a way that not even Riley-Smith's input saves it from being tilted. Terry Jones is simply outstanding with his British (Welsh) accent and deadpan humor as the perfect guide in this tour.
The Crusades were far more complicated than the simplistic Bad Guys (ignorant Europeans/Christians) against the Good Guys (enlightened Arabs/Moslems) picture would make us believe. Historical perspective helps us see the Crusades as a chapter in the (sometimes quite deadly) embrace of two world religions. Long periods of peace are punctuated by terrible periods of war and invasion. The Moslems got the ball rolling when they invaded the Christian lands of North Africa, Spain, and the Bizantine Empire. It took a while for the Christians to counterattack (just as it took a --shorter-- while for the Moslems to react to the Crusaders). When the Christians finally went on the offensive, their timing was not the best, and their choice of tactics was very questionable. Christendom was extremely intolerant back then, so everybody who was not a Christian, and many who were the "wrong" kind of Christian, were immediately suspect and dealt with mercilessly. What the program fails to mention is that Europe always had voices of dissent, and not all Crusaders were murdering barbarians, as not all Popes were conniving greedy zealots. The program also fails to provide the true historical setting of the Crusades: after the Crusaders were defeated, the Moslem world advanced into Europe from the East and South, and it remained in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula) until the late 15th century. It was not until the late 17th century that the Ottoman Turks retreated from the siege of Vienna. The Crusades were a chapter in this stormy relationship of European Christianity and Islam. The producers of the documentary would have served their viewers better by being less politically correct. The slef-flagellation is appropiate and even funny in the hands of Terry Jones, but sometimes too much of a good thing is just too much.
Still, "Crusades" is an excellent program, mostly because I am sure it will interest people who otherwise would have never bothered with medieval history or the Crusades in particular. This documentary is the perfect place to start a healthy interest in history. I also recommend (in book format) Steven Runciman's "History of the Crusades" 3 volumes (try to get the Folio Society Edition: the prints are in color and the binding is superb); "The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades," and "The Atlas of the Crusades," both edited by Riley-Smith; "The Cross and the Crescent," by Malcolm Billings; "The Dream and the Tomb," by Robert Payne; "The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe," edited by George Holmes; and "The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages," edited by Norman F. Cantor. For an interesting thesis that I find flawed, check Karen Armstrong's "Holy War." For a magnificent history of Islam, nothing better than "Islam: Art and Architecture," edited by Hattstein and Delius. And anything written by Professor Bernard Lewis on Islam, the Arabs, the Turks, the Jews, or the Middle East in general, is uniformly good.
Rating:
Summary: Educational if inadequate and twisted
Review: This DVD is an interesting introduction to the crusades and humor increases its educational potency. It succeeds in presenting the facts and progressions of the crusades as well as the barbarosity and cruelty that dominated them. The Crusaders were not all barbarous blood-thirsty killers and the DVD does not forget to point this out. Unfortunately the sincerely faithfull and naive in the worldly ways failed to set the tone. Instead wolves in sheep's clothing, with no God but secular and pagan GREED were allowed to butcher, plunder and rape in the name of Christ. Such men met with fates worthy of their acts and their long-term plans crambled as easily as they were created, at the expense of thousands upon thousands of innocent Christian martyrs that died in their hands or as a consequence of their actions. In the onset of the third crussade, before the break of Protestant and Catholic, the crussaders had been excommunicated by Pope Innocent and that should say something as to their Christian motivation. The country-men of such people and their offspring have a lot to learn from this history and be a little more cautious about the filth that can be wrapped in the cover of Faith, if John's letters do not sufficiently put it to them just what the Anti-christs are. The best apologetics for true Faith is not to allow acts contrary to it. As Christ said: I want compassion/charity, not sacrifice of blood.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't let the kids watch this one (alone)
Review: This is a masterpiece of historical recreation. Terry Jones takes the viewer back in time so that not only do you get the facts of the situation (uncoloured by religious bias), but you can also get a feel of what it was like at the time. I know I wouldn't like to wear that armour! The documentary is not so much pro-muslim but more an unbiased observers viewpoint. Both sides did some pretty reprehensible things at the time (although the muslims were provoked, it doesn't really condone slaughter). This is a must watch documentary.
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