MONMOUTH, Ill. — A newly published history of the Baltics by Monmouth College professor William Urban, titled “The Livonian Crusade,” is really two books in one.

An original edition of the book was printed in 1981, and it sold out quickly. The current 565-page edition, featuring 23 years of additional research, has almost doubled in size Urban’s previous work.

“I have added a lot of maps and illustrations to allow the reader to follow along better,” he said. “The original edition was done with early desktop publishing, which was state-of-the-art at the time but is a long way from this.”

The publisher is the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center in Chicago.

“I’m very pleased with it,” said Urban, who is the Lee L. Morgan professor of history and international studies. “It’s an attractive book, and I’ve been told it’s ‘a good read.’ I put a lot of time into it.”

Since spending six months conducting research in Marburg, Germany, at the Herder Institut during a sabbatical in 1979, Urban noted that information on his subject matter has become increasingly available.

“Research in this area has exploded in recent years,” he said. “There is much more material available, and several good, new scholars have emerged.”

The book covers roughly three centuries of history, from around 1300 to the late 1500s and focuses geographically on what is today Latvia and Estonia.

“This volume concerns the fortunes of a German military-religious order, the Livonian Knights, over a period of two and a half centuries – centuries which were filled with profound changes in European culture, politics and thought,” Urban wrote in the book’s introduction.

“The Livonian Crusade was what might be considered a ‘defensive crusade,’” he said recently. “They were preserving what they had as opposed to making new conquests.”

The Livonian Order led to the development of the Lithuanian state into the largest political unit in Europe, noted Urban, and it contributed to the growing great powers of the future, including Moscow.

Unlike many books, which offer a dedication to family or colleagues, Urban’s book is dedicated “to the hope that the lessons of history will be remembered, while ancient hatreds are forgotten, that we may learn better ways to preserve the peace, extend justice, and bring knowledge and hope to this less than perfect world, without becoming more evil or doing more harm than the men and ideas we seek to combat.”

Urban earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Austin in 1967, following a year of study at the University of Hamburg and a year of teaching at the University of Kansas. He joined the Monmouth faculty in 1966 and was the first recipient of the Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. Urban, who has authored more than a dozen books, was editor of the Journal of Baltic Studies from 1991-94.

The book is available for sale from the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, and Urban said it will be advertised soon by the Amazon and Barnes and Noble Web sites.