This book, written vividly and imaginatively, resembles an adventure novel—but nonetheless it is a serious academic study devoted to one of the most heroic epochs in the history of European civilization. Joseph-François Michaud managed with the true skill of an artist to present a broad panorama of the religious wars of the 11th–13th centuries. He did it so extensively and impressively that even today, amid a new round of religious and ethnic upheavals, his book has not lost relevance.