Though Reston's years of research do not touch on the fact, much of the land conquered by the Crusaders still had Christian majorities throughout the Crusader period.

Neither does it make much sense to think of the Crusades in terms of Muslim natives against Christian aliens. Those were the people who would dominate the area into the 20th century. His most important troops and commanders were Turks. Saladin (Salah ad-Din, born Yusuf ad-Din) was a Kurd. Richard the Lionheart of England and Phillip Augustus of France were not native to the Levant, but then neither was their principal opponent. In the context of the Third Crusade in particular, it makes little sense to speak of a war of Arab resistance, much less of Palestinian nationalism. The problem is that Reston has adopted uncritically the anticolonialist reinterpretation of the Crusades that became fashionable in the 20th century. 'Warriors of God' has a bibliography short enough to be useful. He is to be particularly congratulated for consulting Muslim sources from the period, to balance the well-known European ones.

James Reston, who has written about medieval subjects before, does not disappoint in this book. The people involved are pretty much the same disputatious crew that we meet in the film, 'The Lion in Winter.' They and their Muslim opponents and colleagues really did do the kind of things that are supposed to happen only in comic strips. ISBN 1-7 The Third Crusade (1187-1192) is one of the best imaginable topics for a popular history. Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade It was not locally ruled any time in the previous twenty centuries except for the longer Hasmonean Dynasty and the very brief Bar Kohkba revolt.

It is hard to remember now, but Palestine was a sleepy backwater in the domains of the Romans, and then the Ottomans for a very long time.

Warriors of God by James Reston Jr.