Dan Jones - historian

[Nigeyb]

I'm currently reading...


Crusaders: An Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands by Dan Jones

...and really enjoying it

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars.

For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era.

Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars.

Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global scope and human focus.

[Nigeyb]

Has anyone else read anything by...


Dan Jones?

If Crusaders: An Epic History Of The Wars For The Holy Lands is any indication of his abilities then I am up for reading more of his work

Dan Jones is a historian, broadcaster and award-winning journalist. His books, including The Plantagenets, Magna Carta, The Templars and The Colour of Time, have sold more than one million copies worldwide. He has written and hosted dozens of TV shows including the acclaimed Netflix/Channel 5 series 'Secrets of Great British Castles'. For ten years Dan wrote a weekly column for the London Evening Standard and his writing has also appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, GQ and The Spectator.

His bibliography is on his GoodReads page....

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

[Clare]

I’ve read The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England and The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors. I enjoyed the first more, but I think that’s because it has a wider scope. Military history is not my favourite genre. Dan Jones’s books are well written and the narrative flows. I’ve got The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors on my kindle waiting to be read.

[Nigeyb]

Thanks Clare - that's really helpful


Clare wrote: "I’ve got The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors on my kindle waiting to be read."

I think that will be my next book by Dan Jones - it should follow on very well from Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

[Nigeyb]

Nigeyb wrote: "I'm currently reading...


Crusaders: An Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands by Dan Jones

...and really enjoying it"

And now I've finished

Crusaders: An Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands is clearly impeccably researched and yet the scholarship does not slow down a thoroughly entertaining account peopled by colourful historical characters of all genders and faiths.

Here’s my review

4/5

[Brian E]

Clare wrote: "I’ve read The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England and The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors. I enjoyed the first more..."

I have read these two and also preferred the first more, I think both because I read them consecutively and may have tired of the subject by the end of the second, and also because the first book provided more new information for me. As a Yank, I was not aware of how much of the area of current France the Brits ruled and how much more time the Brit monarchs spent on the mainland than in the British Isles. I guess I wasn't playing close attention during The Lion in Winter.
And while I knew Richard the Lionheart spent most of his time of the Crusades I did not realize that he lived most of his adult life in Aquitaine in the southwest of France and spent as little as six months total living in England. While reading the Plantagenet book, I felt a bit ignorant as I should have known more. Where did I think the Normans came from anyway? Doh! However, I enjoy learning things I should have known more about.
NOTE: The British book is titled The Hollow Crown, but when selling it to Americans they skip that term and go straight to The War of the Roses, presumably a more sellable term for us Yanks.