This insightful portrait of the Crusades illuminates both the rosy myths and the harsh realities of these epic adventures.

Long one of the foremost proponents of a maximalist view of crusading, Norman Housley here turns his attention to the more traditionally studied crusades to the Holy Land itself. This is not a narrative history, like so many before it, but a thematic look at the actual experience of crusading.

The fifteenth century Council of Constance ends the Catholic Church’s papal schism and sets Europe on its path to the Renaissance in this in-depth history. At the dawn of the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Empire posed an existential threat to Christian Europe. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church was in chaos, with three Popes claiming the Chair of Saint Peter and dangerous stirrings of reform. In an attempt to save the Christian world, Emperor Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire called the nations of Europe together for a conference at Constance, beside the Rhine. In The Battle for Christendom, historian Frank Welsh demonstrates that the 1414 Council of Constance was one of the most pivotal events in European history. The last event of the medieval world, the months of fierce debate and political maneuvering heralded the dawn of the Renaissance and the rise of humanism. Yet it would also bring about darker events, as the first moments of the Protestant Reformation began with the burning of the Czech divine, Jan Hus. The story rises to a climax on the battlements of Constantinople in 1453 where, despite all of Sigismund’s attempts to repel the Ottomans, the East rose up once more. In Welsh’s lively retelling, The Battle for Christendom is an enthralling history that holds lessons for our own times of international turmoil.

Here is the first panoptic history of the long struggle between the Christian West and Islam. In this dazzlingly written, acutely nuanced account, Andrew Wheatcroft tracks a deep fault line of animosity between civilizations. He begins with a stunning account of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, then turns to the main zones of conflict: Spain, from which the descendants of the Moors were eventually expelled; the Middle East, where Crusaders and Muslims clashed for years; and the Balkans, where distant memories spurred atrocities even into the twentieth century. Throughout, Wheatcroft delves beneath stereotypes, looking incisively at how images, ideas, language, and technology (from the printing press to the Internet), as well as politics, religion, and conquest, have allowed each side to demonize the other, revive old grievances, and fuel across centuries a seemingly unquenchable enmity. Finally, Wheatcroft tells how this fraught history led to our present maelstrom. We cannot, he argues, come to terms with today’s perplexing animosities without confronting this dark past.

This book lays out the requirements and difficulties that will come with the pursuit of holiness in our Christian lives. Ryle starts out with the way to achieve holiness and the difficulties that arise with pursuing a holy life, and then going throughout the Bible giving true examples of the cost of holiness and the rewards it brings as the Bible promises us. To often we sing and pray for such a life without being willing to undergo the necessary life changes and adjustments to get there. This book lays out what we can expect in such a journey and what God will ask of each of us to get us to the point He wants us to be.

One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious fundamentalism. Armstrong explains how and why fundamentalists' understanding of religion and society differs so starkly from that of their contemporaries.

The Crusades and their impact on today's world.