In this intelligently written book Martin Völkl examines the crusaders’ perceptions of themselves and their Muslim opponents. Concentrating on the ideas and language of papal letters and narrative accounts written in the first fifty years of the movement, he considers the descriptive words used of crusaders and their role, the place given to their sinfulness and to their piety, the suggestions that there could be martyrdom in battle and the belief in divinely inspired warfare. He draws attention to the way in which references to ethical, cultural, political and social distinction were all made to contribute to a picture of an over-riding unity and how the propaganda created an ideal ‘type’ of crusader. On the other hand, the depiction of Muslims as tyrants, barbarians, heathen and enemies of God and the emphasis on the threat that they posed to Christendom, served to reinforce crusader self-identity, although there was, as Völkl points out, a growing understanding of the nature of Islam in the half century between the First and Second Crusades. This book is certainly a valuable one and should be read alongside the recent studies by William Purkis on crusading spirituality and Susanna Throop on crusading and ideas of vengeance, but I wish Völkl had made more use of the mass of material in the cartularies of the period, in which crusaders are recorded as making gifts or raising money on departure and return. Although the charters were written by churchmen, the donors were expected to agree to their wording and one can arguably approach a little nearer to what they themselves thought that they were engaged in.