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 enlarge | Author: Christopher Tyerman
Publisher: Belknap Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $14.83
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New (27) Used (5) from $14.32
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 58301
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1040
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 2.1
ISBN: 0674030702
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9780674030701
ASIN: 0674030702
Publication Date: October 15, 2008
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Shipping: International shipping available
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| Customer Reviews:
 In a Word: Thorough September 29, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Tyerman's "God's War" is, in a word, a massively thorough work that covers a huge range of time and a huge array of theatres of war. While, unlike some, I would recommend it as a very detail introduction, there are some warnings that go with it.
This book covers the entire gamut of Christian holy wars against a variety of enemies in a variety of geographic locations. Not only does it cover the events that shaped the Crusades, but it also details the evolution of thought and the planning that eventually went into them. The book gives the reader a good insight into the mindset of the grassroots Crusader.
While some may find the number of people and names bewildering, I would rather see this as an advantage to the work. It covers a large movement taht involved a huge number of people. The names will provide the new reader with a launching point to further reading about the people that specifically interest you.
While not an easy book to read, (much due to the sheer physical size of it), "God's War" is truly the definitive study on the subject of the Crusades in all their manifestations. If you only read one book on the subject, make it this one. I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot.
 Good for what it is but not a comprehensive history August 28, 2007
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
The review from OP Filmmaker says it best but those thoughts are worth repeating so that the glowing reviews do not mislead. This is not a "history" in the style of most history books. It is an examination of the European social, religious, and political contexts of the crusades. The spotlight is on Europe, not the middle east, and on ideas, not events. What actually happened in the Holy Land is described briefly, in passing (to illustrate some point that Tyerman is making about European events), or not at all. On the other hand, the usually-ignored Albigensian and Baltic crusades are essential to the thesis and are discussed at length.
This is also not a military history. A couple of sieges are describe in some detail but the conduct of war and battle is really not part of the story Tyerman is trying to tell.
That story is enlightening and the book is useful as a companion to some other work - Runciman, for example - that recounts the historical events, or for those already familiar with them. But by presenting this as a "new history" rather than as a specialized work, the publisher has done a disservice to the author and the public. The book will disappoint those who start the struggle through Tyerman's unfortunately tendentious and clumsy prose expecting to be told "what happened" and get instead 900 pages about the background of why it happened.
Roman Catholicism and Eastern Christianity need be distinguished August 18, 2007
1 out of 9 found this review helpful
Any reader of Tyerman's work is clearly a more serious student of history. As such it is important for such a reader to distinguish (on her own, unfortunately) Eastern Christianity (that is, the Christianity of Byzantium) and Roman Catholicism. Since the Crusades themselves served as a material, solidifying force that separated Roman Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy, this dogmatic distinction--made substantively clear by the very existence of the Crusades--should be more pronounced in the work. However (and this is the reason for my giving the work 3 stars), as with the vast majority of other western-oriented studies of Christian history, this is glossed over in favor of a "blanket" view of Christianity. While I am not asking for a theological treatise, some consideration of this issue would ony deepen our understanding of why the Crusades occurred.
It is therefore painful to see that some reviewers here (and even the author himself, at times) characterize certain paradoxes of Christian faith involving the message of Christ and the barbarism of the Crusades without acknowledging that the Roman Catholic interpretation of this message had long since departed from that of the unified, Byzantine Christianity of 4 centuries earlier. That is, it would be more correct to ask whether such paradoxes were perhaps the result of the Roman Catholic departure from ancient Christianity. It should be noted that even when the Byzantines had the power to resist Islam independently (as it had for 5 centuries) there was no such military action against neighbors that resembled the Crusades. Is this not evident in the idea that Tyerman forwards, that the papal desire for the concentration of power superceded the desire for financial gain? What greater a departure from Orthodoxy could there be?
 Great Work June 19, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
First, I must add the disclaimer that I read this book over several months, in 5-25 page bits, so my experience may be different from yours. Having said that, this is a great work of history, Tyerman leaves out no detail, and maintains fantastic writing, including a great vocabulary with many words I had never even seen before, throughout this 1000+ page text. Some other reviewers have accused him of composing a boring work, and to a degree this is true; Tyerman goes into politics that can be tedious at times, and he deals with royal families that can be as large as they are repetitive. However, if you manage to go through this book deliberately, there is plenty of information and analysis to be had. For those of you looking for stories about Richard the Lion and romantic Curasade stories, this simply isn't your book. While Tyerman does touch on the these areas, he also discusses Crusades in Iberia, the Baltic, Anatolia, Egypt, and Cyprus, offering a perspective much broader than a focus simply on the Holy Land could muster. Finally, I would like to comment on the balance in sources Tyerman brings as an historian. He leaves no source unchallenged for bias, constantly seeking affirmatory or conflicting accounts, and more importantly he has a great command of the Arab and even Mongolian perspective of the Crusades, with many primary and secondary sources to back him. Overall, I recommend this book to any student of history, especially those with a few months to spare.
Narrative History At It's Best April 3, 2007
15 out of 20 found this review helpful
All I can say to this book's critics is that they should stick to, say, Tom Clancey. I teach and write military history for a living and consider God's War one of the finest works in the field to appear in a generation. It is long, but the subject is complex and covers far more than the battles in the Holy Land. Tyerman is one of the "new breed" of British historians working on the Middle Ages and has given the subject of the Crusades a state of the art treatment. It covers the story at length - good if one is interested in the subject - and does so with splendid empathy. If one doesn't read books because they won't fit in your shirt pocket, perhaps one should pass on this one. Of course, such a person would also pass on some of the masterpieces in various fields. (One thinks of "Citizen" by Simon Schama - brilliant, but long.) This is a truly great work and will stand as the central reference in English for two generations at least.
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