Yet the reasoned views of historians are not shared by everyone. Indeed, there exist today plenty of extremists—both Christian and Muslim—who believe crusading is still an important concept that can (or should) continue to define modern-day relations between the two faiths. The crusades are not, to their minds, a mere metaphor or even an inspiring example for a macabre form of historical reenactment. They are a real, ongoing phenomenon: a war to be fought from the Middle East and North Africa to the streets of Western cities: London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Christchurch.

from Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands, by Dan Jones

If the expedition had been anything, it had been intense, fun, wild, the experience of a lifetime and perhaps of a nation’s entire history. Floating, watching the rectangle of sky that is practically night-blue even during the day in the mountains of Mexico, Jazmín imagined—as surely they all were imagining now that the noise had died down—that between his body and their allies’ army were thousands of Tenochca warriors all dying to take a nibble of his leg. The idea, uncomfortable as it was, turned him on a little. Then, too, the causeways the Tlaxcalteca would have to use to enter the city had movable bridges. And maybe Moctezuma had seduced them for reasons unknown and had led them into a trap, leaving them with no choice but to think they could still take the cheese.

from You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer