Cheap The Crusades: The Flame of Islam (Book) (Harold Lamb) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Crusades: The Flame of Islam

Book that Changed my Life
I read this book when I was about 14 years of age or so, about 44 years ago. Harold Lamb quoted contemporary Muslim and Christian accounts of numerous events of the crusades. Most of these were utter lies and propaganda, such as, "We slew 500 of the infidels for the greater glory of Allah" and, "We slew 500 infidels for the greater glory of God", and then folded them into a meaningful and coherent whole ("As near as we could see, the Muslims slew 130 Christians and the Christians slew 200 Muslims" (I'm paraphrasing here)).
At this time, (I'm writing this January, 2002) when we now find ourselves fighting battles for many of the same reasons as during the original crusades of over a thousand years ago, his writings are even more essential than they have been in the past.
I have not read this book for many years, only recently getting my hands onto a copy. Maybe the book will not have nearly the effect now that it had on me so many years ago, but I'm excited for having the opportunity to read it. I'll attempt to update this after finishing the book this time, but I've given it a five star rating because of the effect it has always had on me since the first time I read it.

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A Cruzade of Culture
This book is the sequence of the marvelous Iron Men and Saints, and altough the last is still way ahead with the seizure of Antioch and Jerusalem, the Flame of Islam brings the Generalship of Saladin and the of the Great english warrior King Richard Coeur de Lion. A must read. And a plus to culture.

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fine, classy approach to the clash Islam/Christianity
Lamb has always been a scholar quite interested in the East, its inhabitants become real living people, our peers, and then he draws the characters, situations, and forces that build up a completely new, unseen, unheard of, historical movement. The deplacement of Europe to "regain" the Holy Land has been reviewed and studied, for the last l00 years as a phenomenon of real Christian faith, and from the point of view of the European cultures: France, England, Austria, Italy, etc. But, what about the point of view of the so-called infidels? Lamb has the skill to keep himself neutral, nevertheless he gives us the facts and gives the reader the golden opportunity: the possibility to make its own judgement, based in, more or less, non-fictional facts. And that's Lamb's greatest achivement. He novelizes a subject, but finally it is only a very valid literary resource to lead us to the precise point of human History where the author wants us; and at the same time, Lamb makes Aquinas "tolle, lege", his own. So, after reading "The Crusades", and paying careful attention to the subtitle: "The flame of Islam", we understand that greed, false piousness, false pride, ignorance; the arrogance of the self-conceited christian warriors, lustful, bored -perhaps with a tint of real faith-, made the Europeans cross the seas and barren lands to get to Jerusalem, the three-times blessed City. But, from the pages of Lamb we may be able to point out that failure of the enterprise was due, from the 1st Crusade, to jealousy, envy, and the search of personal success.It was not their main goal to recover The Holy Land. If it had been true, they would have succeeded. Lamb has his personal favorite hero: Saladin, the most chivalrous of enemies, a very intelligent and skillful men, with a good warfare knowledge, quite learned and, by far, the most important Islam's defender of the Faith. The brilliancy of the exposition of Lamb, his excellent use of terms, and his profound knowledge of the ! East provide the ambience. His academic background provides real historical facts, and, ...you have in your hands a must-be-read book!