Nikolas Jaspert is undoubtedly the leader of a new generation of young German historians of the crusades. This outline account, first published in Germany in 2003, is as efficient and up-to-date as one might expect. It begins with a chapter on the background to the preaching of the First Crusade and ends with a brief discussion of the heritage of the crusade movement. In between it covers crusading and the activities of the military orders in all theatres – the Levant and north Africa, the Iberian peninsula, the Baltic region and the interior of western Europe – from 1095 to 1530. It gives most space to the expeditions to the Levant and to the settlements established in their wake and it is particularly interesting on Spain, which is one of Jaspert's fields of research. Each chapter opens with a short time-line. Technicalities are often treated separately, in boxes. There are very few errors and the discussion is a sensible one. The tone throughout is dispassionate and the coverage of topics terse, perhaps sometimes too condensed; the treatment of Shi‘ism, for example, refers to the lineage of imams from ‘Ali, but makes no reference to Occultation, without which a reader would be completely at sea. But although this is a good trustworthy introduction I am not sure I can identify the audience in Britain to which it will appeal. This is significant, because it will have to compete with several other short histories in English, recently generated by a renewed interest in crusading which is due above all to the rhetoric of the Sunni Salafist jihadis. Jaspert must have written it to meet a specific need in Germany, but it is too dry for British fifteen-year-olds and not nearly expansive enough for A-Level or university students, who need to be introduced to the controversial issues in the subject that have been debated in the last few years and are not yet resolved. Those in the know can easily discern in Jaspert's narrative the side he has taken in the debates, but most readers will not be in the position to understand that behind many of the statements he makes there lies argument which is often intense. So, although this book is useful as a factual, bare-boned reflection of up-to-date thinking, it does not convey the intellectual excitement of a subject which has been in ferment.