Summary
Title: Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade
Author: James Reston
Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday
ISBN: 0385495625
Pro:
• Fast-moving, well-written, and very engaging
Con:
• No notes
• Historically dubious: debatable ideas presented as absolute fact
• Paper-thin characterizations of people
Description:
• History of the Third Crusade, biographies of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart
• Reads more as a historical dramatization than a historical account
Book Review
It seems difficult to describe anything about the Crusades as especially heroic — the brutal butchering of human beings in the name of religion and territorial conquest isn’t especially laudable. Still, if there was heroism to be had under those conditions Richard and Saladin were the ones to express it, not to mention inspire it in their closest confidants.
This has also inspired James Reston’s book about them and the Third Crusade. More historical drama than historical text, Reston’s Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade is a fast-moving and well-written account of how individual personalities can substantially affect the course of history through sheer force of will.
The Third Crusade lasted five years, but Reston’s work covers a larger expanse of time, providing an introduction to the crusades themselves as well as detailed background on the personal histories of both Richard and Saladin. This book is, in fact, just as much a biography of these two figures as it is a history of the Third Crusade.
In both cases, though, it is debatable as to whether Reston really succeeds. In terms of the biographies, we learn a great deal about what Richard and Saladin did but not as much as we should about why they did it. A good biography should provide insight into how and why a particular personality developed in the way that it did, and thereby help a person understand how things turned out one way rather than another.
Overall, Reston’s characterizations of Saladin and Richard tend to be one-sided — not only in the sense of personalities being described in a simplistic manner, but also in the sense that there is s consistent and predictable bias. Just about everything Richard does is bad and his only good quality seems to be occasional heroism. Saladin, however, can do no wrong — even when his actions are just as brutal as Richard's, they are motivated by piety and that makes them OK. Thus, in the end, it’s difficult to say that we really understand them — something that a good biography should help us with.
