"For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human...

(Recognizing that the Christian crusades unfolded in a world shaped by Islamic jihads, Lambert scrutinizes both militant forms of religion simultaneously. In a world where memories of crusader atrocities sustain virulent new forms of jihad, such balanced scholarship offers hope of interfaith understanding. -- Booklist

"The Middle Ages have just begun when Vigdis Adelaïs, a young woman from a prosperous French family, falls in love with David Todros, a student at the city's yeshiva, and the son of a rabbi. To be together, they must flee their city, Vigdis renouncing a life of privilege and comfort. Pursued by her father's knights and in constant danger of betrayal, the lovers embark on a dangerous journey to the south of France, only to find their brief happiness...

Freddy the golden hamster and his animal cohorts, along with a computerized, robotic golden hamster, travel back in time to Assyria, where some of them are captured by crusaders and Freddy gets a taste of undomesticated living.