For a fairly academic feeling book, this was a great read. There was period when I was younger where I love reading historical non-fiction and this book has, at least temporarily, rekindled that flame.

Asbridge does a good job of both covering a 3 century period of time and giving enough time to individual events and players to make parts almost read like a novel. Numerous quotes and citations from contemporary works are provided, giving one the impression that this work is solidly ground in scholarly research.

There's also an interesting discussion at the end of the book explaining how the rhetoric of crusading came to enter our current political era... much of if predicated on grossly romanticized, sanitized and just plain inaccurate.

A++ would read again. (Probably not really, but I'll certainly consider other works by Asbridge.)