He points his finger accusingly at the west for the sack of Constantinople during the 4th crusade but it isn't until the last fraction of the book that we're told of the Massacre of the Latin's which took place only 20 some odd years earlier and at the point we're told it is only used as a tool to once again offset the barbarity of the jihadists. Crowley at this point feels compelled to tell us that Vlad Dracula also impaled people inferring some sort of relativism and providing no context aside from attempting to excuse or lessen the barbarity of the act by mehmet. On one occasion during the siege Mehmet captured 40 sailors and had them impaled on stakes inserted through their rectums driven through their vital organs with hammers and planted before the walls. Several examples of this western self-loathing in Crowley's writing stood out. In their actions you can see the root of the Taliban that would purposefully destroy a millennia old Buddhist colossus. However, the author repeatedly goes out of his way to apologize for the barbarity of Mehmet and the Turks and to downplay the fact that the Turks were literally coveting and hell bent on sacking and corrupting a city that was founded and built by the work of another culture. This is a well told story recounting the history of the fall of Byzantium. A well written narrative with bizarre and biased commentary
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