Kyle Harrison
to-read
Defenders of the West
Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam
- Author
- Raymond Ibrahim
- Published
- 2022
- Recommended
- Once
Why it’s on the list: Ibrahim’s set of eight biographies — Godfrey of Bouillon, El Cid, Richard the Lionheart, Vlad the Impaler, John Hunyadi and others — argued explicitly as a corrective to what he takes to be a sanitised account of the medieval conflict with Islam. Polemical by design; read as an argument, not a survey.
No page_count: Open Library holds the edition but records no page figure.
Where I saw it: In the reply thread to @typesfast’s question, “What’s the best history book you’ve read?” (June 5, 2025) — a crowd-sourced list Kyle recovered by hand and saved to his Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full set of replies lives on What’s the best history book… (tweet). It was listed there as “Defenders of the West”.
Connections
- Christianity — the frame the book argues from.
- Religious Intellectualism — religion as the organising claim of a history rather than its subject.
- History — an openly revisionist account, worth reading as a position.
- What’s the best history book… (tweet) — the thread this recommendation came from.