The Last Crusaders: The Hundred-Year Battle for the Center of the World

xvii, 482 pp. Maps precede text, reproductions of historical illustrations in text. The Crusades were the bridge between medieval and modern history, between feudalism and colonialism. In many ways, the little explored later Crusades were the most significant of them all, for they made the crisis truly global. The Last Crusaders is about the period's last great conflict between East and West, and the titanic contest betwee Habsburg-led Christendom and the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the great naval campaigns and the ferocious struggle to dominate the North African shore, the conflict spread out along trade routes, consuming nations and cultures, destroying dynasties, and spawning the first colonial empires in South America and the Indian Ocean. The Last Crusaders is narrative history at its richest and most compelling.