In their book, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical
             Methods, the authors write, "History as academic historians write it today
             would be almost unrecognizable to scholars working even fifty years ago,
             let alone in a past that is a century, two centuries - or twenty centuries
             - old" (Howell and Prevenier 119). The First Crusade, edited by Edward
             Peters, is a collection of texts that includes not only currently accepted
             historical views, but also primary source material. This book allows the
             reader an opportunity to examine the method used by the author while
             reading the various accounts of events. It is important for the reader to
             have a basic comprehension of historical methodology to understand the
             value and context of the texts contained in The First Crusade.
             There are many ways by which to record history. The methods used by
             historians are as different as are the historians themselves. This is why
             a collection of primary source materials differs from digested' and
             compiled history. Howell and Prevenier explain that this interpretational
             framework may include Historicism, a process attributed to Leopold von
             Ranke, or Positivism, as defined by August Comte. A third approach to
             history, the teleological view and "expounded by Aristotle" is defined as
             "seeing the universe as striving towards its own final cause" (Aristotle
             2). By seeing history as a type of creation, one understands the value of
             primary sources such as those in Peters' book.
             The Story of the First Crusade begins with a proclamation made by Pope
             Urban II in the year 1095 and extends to St. Gilles march toward Jerusalem
             in early 1099. Peters extends the context of his collection to the year
             1270 in the appendix of his book. He begins with four distinct accounts
             of the same event in his book, Urban's speech. In doing so, he provides
             the reader with a broad sense of the meanin...