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God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades. By Rodney Stark (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009, Pp. 276. $24.99.)
In God's Battalions, Princeton sociologist of religion Rodney Stark seeks to dispel myths about the medieval Crusades and replace them with a more factual account. In popular histories and textbooks, the Crusades have been viewed as (among other things) a stain on the history of the Christian Church and a warm-up for later European colonialism. Both of these characterizations, argues Stark, do not comport with the facts. Stark argues that in approaching the Crusades one must understand them within the overall history of Islam's aggression against the West. The first chapters deal with the rapid expansion of Islam from Arabia throughout the former lands of Christendom. In light of this aggressive expansion as well as the massive...