"Unique among the kings of England, Richard I played a leading role in the great events of world history - in his case the struggle for control of the Middle East by two great religions, Islam and Christianity. No other monarch took on a challenge remotely comparable with that of the Third Crusade: taking a fleet and army to the eastern end of the Mediterranean and facing down an adversary as formidable as the great Saladin."--BOOK JACKET. "Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians such as Hume, Gibbon and Stubbs criticized Richard for his neglect of domestic government and policy, and cast him as a careless ruler and bad husband."--BOOK JACKET. "Harnessing the latest sources and interpretations, John Gillingham provides a new assessment of Richard I, looking at what matters in history as well as what matters in legend."--BOOK JACKET.