Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: The Call from the East (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2012) (From the book jacket: "Nearly all historians of the First Crusade focus on the papacy and its willing warriors in the West, along with innumerable popular tales of bravery, tragedy, and resilience. In sharp contrast, [Peter] Frankopan examines events from the East, in particular from Constantinople, seat of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The result is revelatory. The true instigator of the First Crusade, we see, was the Emperor Alexis I Komnenos, who in 1095, with his realm under siege from the Turks and on the point of collapse, begged the pople for military support. Basing his account on long-ignored eastern sources, Frankopan also gives a provocative and highly original explanation of the world-changing events that followed the First Crusade. The Vatican's victory cemented papal power, while Constantinople, the heart of the still-vital Byzantine empire, never recovered. As a result, both Alexios and Byzantium were consigned to the margins of history. From Frankopan's revolutionary work, we gain a more faithful understanding of the way the taking of Jerusalem set the stage for western Europe's dominance up to the present day and shaped the modern world.").
Anna Komnene, The Alexiad, translated from the Greek by E. R. A. Sewter, revised with Introduction and Notes by Peter Frankopan (London: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2009) (From the back cover: "Anna Komnene (1083-1152) wrote The Alexiad as an account of the reign of her father, the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I. It is an important source of information on the Byzantine war with the Normans, and on the First Crusade in which Alexios participated. Offering a startling different perspective to that of Western historians, Anna's character sketches are shrewd and forthright--from the Norman invader Robert Guiscard ('nourished by manifold evil') and his son Bohemond ('like a streaking thunderbolt') to Pope Gregory VII ('unworthy of a high priest'). The Alexiad is a vivid and dramatic narrative, which reveals as much about the personality of its intelligent and dynamic author as it does about the fascinating period through which she lived.").
