Also good from......

Hilaire Belloc is "The Crusades".  He tells the story of the first Crusade because he says it was the only successful one.  It kept a Christian Kingdom in the Holy Land for almost a century until it was defeated by the forces of Saladdin, who managed to unite the Moslems from Egypt to the Euphrates, and the Crusaders were vastly outnumbered.Very readable and a painless way to study history.  The third book I took from the Vancouver library was  a copy of "Religion and the Rise of Western Culture" by Christopher Dawson.  Not as easy to read as Belloc.