Warriors of God

Inside Hezbollah's Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel

By: Nicholas Blanford

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel. Based on more than a decade and a half of reporting in Lebanon and conversations with Hezbollah’s determined fighters, Blanford reveals their ideology, motivations, and training, as well as new information on military tactics, weapons, and sophisticated electronic warfare and communications systems.

Using exclusive sources and his own dogged investigative skills, Blanford traces Hezbollah’s extraordinary evolution—from a zealous group of raw fighters motivated by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution into the most formidable non-state military organization in the world, whose charismatic leader vows to hasten Israel’s destruction. With dramatic eyewitness accounts, including Blanford’s own experiences of the battles, massacres, triumphs, and tragedies that have marked the conflict, the story follows the increasingly successful campaign of resistance that led to Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

Warriors of God shows how Hezbollah won hearts and minds with exhaustive social welfare programs and sophisticated propaganda skills. Blanford traces the group’s secret military build-up since 2000 and reveals the stunning scope of its underground network of tunnels and bunkers, becoming the only journalist to independently discover and explore them. With the Middle East fearful of another, even more destructive war between Lebanon and Israel, Blanford tenaciously pursues Hezbollah’s post-2006 battle plans in the Lebanese mountains, earning him newspaper scoops as well as a terrifying interrogation and a night in jail.

Featuring sixteen years of probing interviews with Hezbollah’s leaders and fighters, Warriors of God is essential to understanding a key player in a region rocked by change and uncertainty.

Critic reviews

Praise for Nicholas Blanford’s Killing Mr. Lebanon

“A rich piece of storytelling . . . brilliant stuff.”—Scott MacLeod, Middle East correspondent, Time magazine

“This is not only a real-life thriller but a story with huge implications for the future of the region. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Lebanon, Blanford is the man to tell it.”—Richard Beeston, foreign editor, The Times

“As gripping as a thriller, yet packed with sober insight . . . required reading for anyone interested in today’s Middle East.”—Joshua Landis, author of SyriaComment.com and associate professor of Middle Eastern studies, University of Oklahoma

“A brisk portrait of the man’s travails and legacy.”—Max Rodenbeck, The New York Review of Books

Lots of first person info

The reporter obviously has plenty of first hand knowledge from his years of reporting on the region, which I like. Now, all I need to do is find corroborating accounts of his info elsewhere.

Blends personal accounts and history beautifully

NIcholas Blanford provides a comprehensive factual overview of Hezbollahs early years, though it is certainly influenced, for better or for worse, by his own biases after spending so much time covering Hezbollah and getting to know many of them. In the case of the Palestinians, Blanford is particularly harsh with his criticism of them and spends little to no time explaining the causes of that animosity assuming readers have background knowledge on the PLO and their internal issues. Nonetheless Blanford does a wonderful job humanizing the Hezbollah fighters and the Lebanese civilians caught in the middle of the brutal conflict. Other reviews criticized him for a "one-sided" story that ignored the Israeli point of view, however Blanford DOES explain the motivations behind many Israeli military actions and Blanford is clear that the book explicitly centers Hezbollah so Israel is not the central theme.

Insurmountable Research on this Subject

The author lived among the Lebanese people for one-third of his life as a journalist for the English news publication in Lebanon. While there, his insider allowances and relationships with Hezbollah's foundational members, prove insurmountable hermeneutic research into this book's subject matter. He mixes first-hand accounts with dogged research and personal interviews for his information. While this provides incredible insight from one perspective, it sits a bit lacking in Israeli perspective and plight.
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Though I do not possess a formidable insight into the advent of Hezbollah and their struggles with Israel, I must call attention to the author's tendency to cast Israel as the villain. Not that they don't deserve their share of the blame, given the veracity of this history, and the fact that war comes with a cost. Even so, I felt limited blame was placed on the Shia resistance and their justifications for violence which remain controversial today. This account is brilliant but quite one-sided.

I went into this book not anticipating that but was left with some questions and an opportunity to investigate the opposite viewpoint. This is not a knock on the book, as it was quite good, but merely a "heads-up" to those going in. You'll likely go looking for book two as I have.

Great Book and great Audio

I loved every sec of it. The audio was good. The story was very detailed that it put you in the middle of the story.

Good view of the group

For much of the book, I believed the point of view to be excessively in favor of Hezbollah, even for someone who's not a fan of Israel. Attacks against Lebanese civilians are described in stomach-turning detail, but there is often no mention of Israeli civilian victims killed by Hezbollah. However that side of the story is normally told extensively in the media, so perhaps it was intentional for that reason. Also the author was not in Israel anyhow.

Well narrated and at a good enough pace that you cab safely set it to 1.25x speed without it sounding goofy.