Las Navas de Tolosa: 1212 la batalla que decidió la Reconquista (The Battle that decided the Reconquest) is the best book that anyone can read regarding the massive crusade that is known to history as The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.

Although it seems small in scope, a book being solely about a single battle. The vast amount of information in this book is awesome. The amount of work the author did to write book is incredible. To fully understand the battle, the author goes into great detail of the political landscape of the Iberia Peninsula, on both Christian and Muslim sides. He goes into great detail how the military campaign was organized from a strategical approach. We get to learn about crusading and jihad ideology, and finally we learn about the tactics that was used in the battlefield.

This is a purely scholarly focused book, also with a heavily anthropology focus. The author literally describes the march of both armies to the battle with clear precision. He literally gives us the actual GPS coordinates, with clear details describing the environment! Perhaps the only drawback of this book is that it doesn’t include maps. Having already done an excellent job researching and describing the journey and battle, I feel that with the addition of maps, would have taking this already incredible book to an even higher standard.

(YouTube Video has some inaccuracies)