The book is based on widely known published sources of the First Crusade and the first century of crusading. As far as I understood, there are two major questions which the book addresses. First, the author looks at the crusades in a broad perspective: do crusades represent a special kind of religious violence when compared with other warring practices, earlier and contemporary? Second, he wants to understand to what extent the chronicles of the first crusades actually reflected the viewpoint of crusade participants, or whether they were rather an artificial construct by chroniclers. In other words, the book aims at evaluating to what extent crusades were a kind of religious violence, and to what extent a special kind of violence in comparison with ‘ordinary’ wars.

In fact, there is not a lot of information on either of these issues. There are only rare examples which provide historical context. I would say, rather, that the book is a general work on how the crusade was perceived by chroniclers, some of whom were participants in the expeditions. The first chapter addresses the history of the First Crusade and its prehistory. Crispin discusses various versions of Pope Urban ii’s Clemont speech, recorded in several First Crusade chronicles, and some of the historiography on this issue. All in all, there is nothing new on these matters, unsurprisingly, perhaps, as it is hard to say anything new given the scarcity of relevant sources. The second chapter deals with the First Crusade chronicles written by eyewitnesses, and the third chapter with later texts about the expedition. Crispin provides various examples on widely known issues present in First Crusade sources, both eyewitness and non-eyewitness: crusader conquest is violence, which is supported by God who sometimes even performs miracles to help crusaders or control their behaviour, and who is keen that the Holy Places be purged of the spiritual pollution caused by the presence of the Saracens. He adds that, of course, belief in miracles was not blind, and this can be perfectly illustrated by the story of the Holy Lance at Antioch. Chapters iv and v demonstrate that these major issues can also be found in sources on the Second Crusade (chronicles, St Bernard's sermons) and in the well-known chronicle composed by William of Tyre before the Third Crusade. Although the book is an interesting general study on how the crusades were presented by their contemporaries, the issues that it discusses are not new. As far as I can judge, Crispin is the first to collect a number of examples on the idea of the ‘spiritual pollution’ of the Holy Places by Saracens, but various questions related to divine support for the crusaders are well covered by extant publications.

There are important lacunae in the bibliography. For example, on p. 51 Crispin mentions the evidence on the First Crusade preaching taken from charters referring to an article by H. E. J. Cowdrey, but does not mention an important article on the same question by Jonathan Riley-Smith which is absent from the bibliography as well. A very important 2016 work by Nicholas Morton entitled Encountering Islam on the First Crusade addressing the question of whether the First Crusade really had a strong anti-Islamic focus should have been used as well. An extremely important study by Cecilia Gaposchkin on the crusade liturgy (2017) probably appeared too close to publication for Crispin to take account of it. Crispin knows some works by Jean Flori, but unfortunately the most important of these, published in 2010 and entitled Chroniqueurs et propagandists, goes unmentioned. His last work on crusade preaching, Prêcher la croisade (2012), would have also been useful. Such lacunae certainly limit the study's usefulness. They can also lead to a kind of reinventing the wheel: for example, on p. 158 Crispin suggests that Albert of Aachen diminishes the role of the pope in the First Crusade because of being a supporter of the emperor, without referring to any previous studies, while the idea was already suggested in the above-mentioned book by Flori (p. 286) and probably in other studies as well. Furthermore, the author quotes only the editions of Robert the Monk and Baldric of Bourgueil produced in the nineteenth century, and not the most recent ones published in 2013–14, though he is aware of them and cites their introductory comments. Not all chronicles are used: the bibliography lacks the chronicle of Ralf of Caen, a modern edition of which was published in CCCM in 2011.