It ain't great but the problem isn't in the details, it's in the interpretations -- and Stark has a polemical position that he's trying to advocate. Just look at his brief "conclusion." He's offering a defense of the crusading enterprise by rehashing, and uncritically reading, a 12th-century argument. No one would doubt that the crusaders as a whole believed in what they were doing and it'd be hard to argue that they didn't feel under threat, but perception and reality are 2 different things.

In othe rwords, although the actual events he describes did indeed happen, the writing of history, even in an action as seemingly innocuous as describing "what happened," is still an act of interpretation and so I'd tread very lightly with his book.