"This ... book details the ... later crusades, which were fought between 1200 and 1588. These began with the attempts to regain the city of Jerusalem, held by the Christians for two generations but lost to Saladin in 1187. Unlike the relatively simple first to third crusades, the later struggles in Palestine were complicated by feuding between both opposing forces, with kings defying [popes], crusading armies attacking Christian cities, and the lords of Outremer fighting amongst themselves. Conflict spread to Egypt, Spain and Italy, and then beyond, as the [pope] used his call to arms to invoke campaigns against European pagans and Christian heretics. The book contains ... information on the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula, the extraordinary sixth crusade of the twice-excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and the rise and fall of the Knights Templar. Charles Phillips [maps] this complex period of history and [explains] how the crusades impacted on the relogious, social, and political aspects of life in that time, but also how the conflict still resonates in Europe and the Middle East today."--Book flap.