Books: The Massed Typewriters

A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES, VOL I-THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS (694 pp )—Edited by Marshall W. Baldwin and Kenneth M. Setton—University of Pennsylvania ($12).

U.S. scholarship, like the U.S. armed forces, has become famed for massive deployment, abundant materiel and relentless attention to detail. During the past ten years a task force of some 65 U.S. historians and foreign allies, with headquarters at the University of Pennsylvania, has fanned out across the ancient paths of the crusaders. Objective:

a five-volume history to record only the most rigorously verified facts. When Britain's Steven Runciman concluded his own excellent one-man history (TIME, Oct. 25) he...