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xv Preface Few medieval topics can rival the crusades in terms of modern popularity. Opin- ionated, modern commentary on medieval crusading, for better or worse, abounds in political speeches, television news broadcasts, newspaper articles, on Web sites, and on social media. The crusades are also regularly depicted on film and television, in both movies and documentaries. Novelists, from those who take historical research seriously to those who provide conspiracy-driven, highly fic- tionalized narratives, also write extensively about medieval crusading. These are the sources through which most people learn about the crusades. Although their work gets considerably less attention from the general public, the crusades are a popular topic among historians as well as specialists in medieval literature and religion. The fascination of scholars with medieval crusading has led to the creation of a huge body of academic literature on the topic that often frames aspects of the history in a very different way than modern popular accounts. His- torians have also produced many scholarly reference works on the crusades, with ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press being at the forefront of such efforts. The most notable and substantive example is Alan V. Murray’s monumental 2005 four- volume work, The Crusades: An Encyclopedia. In it, conscientious journalists or television producers could have access to a large number of high-quality essays by leading scholars on a wide variety of topics to better inform them on scholarly understandings of the crusades. Similarly, historian Alfred J. Andrea produced a wonderful encyclopedia of the crusades in 2003 for Greenwood Press, with more than 200 informative and lively essays packed into one conveniently accessible volume that anyone providing public commentary on the crusades should have on their bookshelf. Professors Murray and Andrea, leading scholars of the crusades, are admired and respected by their colleagues in the field. They give generously of their time to junior scholars, students, and members of the public, and so it makes sense that they would produce such helpful works that could be accessible to nonscholars. Thus, when presented with the opportunity to produce an updated encyclopedia