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hollysbookadventure's review
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
5.0
Did you know that I went to a catholic college for five years [undergrad and graduate], and not ONCE did I learn about the crusades? So I decided to take matters into my own hands. The Era of Crusades is a great courses plus lecture turned audio book, available through my audible plus subscription.
Professor Kenneth Harl dives deep into the crusades, and explains how political and religious factors lead to each crusade, and how each crusades differed form each other. This lecture doesn't really go into strategies or how attacks were launched, but instead talks about how tensions between the church and the state lead to certain leaders trying to reclaim Jerusalem in a crusade.
This lecture series was dense, and provided alot of information. It was more then just a cursory gloss over the subject, which I appreciated. I appreciated the lecture style which would discuss what was happening in East and West Europe as well as Asia and Asia minor in a parallel, so the listener knew what was going on in each spot of the world at the same time.
This is the second lecture by Professor Kenneth Harl I have listened to. The other one being about the Vikings. I was unsure about how I felt about the lecture style in thay one because I felt often women in history were described negatively, when men with the same qualities wernt. In The Era of The Crusades I still found many of the descriptions of women to be very harsh, but it was balanced out with more of the men additionally being described negatively.
The Crusades were a lot more complex than Robin Hood Men in Tights lead me to believe. So I'm glad I listened to this book!
Professor Kenneth Harl dives deep into the crusades, and explains how political and religious factors lead to each crusade, and how each crusades differed form each other. This lecture doesn't really go into strategies or how attacks were launched, but instead talks about how tensions between the church and the state lead to certain leaders trying to reclaim Jerusalem in a crusade.
This lecture series was dense, and provided alot of information. It was more then just a cursory gloss over the subject, which I appreciated. I appreciated the lecture style which would discuss what was happening in East and West Europe as well as Asia and Asia minor in a parallel, so the listener knew what was going on in each spot of the world at the same time.
This is the second lecture by Professor Kenneth Harl I have listened to. The other one being about the Vikings. I was unsure about how I felt about the lecture style in thay one because I felt often women in history were described negatively, when men with the same qualities wernt. In The Era of The Crusades I still found many of the descriptions of women to be very harsh, but it was balanced out with more of the men additionally being described negatively.
The Crusades were a lot more complex than Robin Hood Men in Tights lead me to believe. So I'm glad I listened to this book!
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