leszkoss
Junior Member
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2011
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Polish
- Home Country
- Poland
- Current Location
- UK
I am currently during the course of reading ‘The Crusades’ by Geofrrey Hindley. The purpose of the work is to give the reader a brief account of the aforementioned topic, as the author states himself in the acknowledgements of the book. It is quite a heavy reading and I find it hard to get into it. The reasons for that are advanced vocabulary and elaborate style, which makes some parts impenetrable. As I am learning English, I treat it as an additional challenge.
As far as the content of the book is concerned, it seems to give a sufficient amount of information for those unfamiliar with the topic. One thing that I find disturbing is the clear negative bias in how the author depicts the Christian side. I have the impression that while he was writing the book, he deliberately strived to leave a feeling of disfavour towards Crusaders and the whole idea of Crusades in the potential reader. The author’s tendentious manner of showing Christians in bad light is somewhat irritating. He may not like Christianity but it raises doubts about his credibility as an objective historian. It can however encourage more ambitious readers to dig deeper into the matter.
As far as the content of the book is concerned, it seems to give a sufficient amount of information for those unfamiliar with the topic. One thing that I find disturbing is the clear negative bias in how the author depicts the Christian side. I have the impression that while he was writing the book, he deliberately strived to leave a feeling of disfavour towards Crusaders and the whole idea of Crusades in the potential reader. The author’s tendentious manner of showing Christians in bad light is somewhat irritating. He may not like Christianity but it raises doubts about his credibility as an objective historian. It can however encourage more ambitious readers to dig deeper into the matter.