The kings of Castile maintained a personal cavalry guard through much of the fifteenth century, consisting of practicing Muslims and converts to Christianity. This privileged Muslim elite provides an interesting case-study to propose new theories about voluntary conversion from Christianity to Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the ways of assimilation of such a group into the local and courtly environments where they lived thereafter. Other subjects involved are the transformation of royal armies from feudal companies to regimented, professional forces including a well-trained cavalry, which in Castile was formed partly by these knights. Their descendants had to endure the changing policies conveyed by Isabel and Fernando, which increased discriminatory habits towards converts in Castilian society.

The kings of Castile maintained a personal cavalry guard through much of the fifteenth century, consisting of practicing Muslims and converts to Christianity. This privileged Muslim elite provides an interesting case-study to propose new theories about voluntary conversion from Christianity to Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the ways of assimilation of such a group into the local and courtly environments where they lived thereafter. Other subjects involved are the transformation of royal armies from feudal companies to regimented, professional forces including a well-trained cavalry, which in Castile was formed partly by these knights. Their descendants had to endure the changing policies conveyed by Isabel and Fernando, which increased discriminatory habits towards converts in Castilian society.

The English essayist Charles Lamb once said, “Man is a gaming animal.” If he had known the American frontier gamblers depicted in this book, he might have added “in spades,” referring to the avidity with which these “knight of the green cloth” pursued their profession. All of the pioneers who ventured into the American West of the nineteenth century were gamblers in a sense, betting on the land, the future, and themselves. They risked their fortunes and, sometimes, their very lives. And for those too impatient to wait for the bonanza of a rich ore strike, or for the cattle to multiply, or for the town to develop, the gambling table offered an opportunity for instant riches. The almost universal acceptance and popularity of gambling games on the frontier was predictable, and the rise of the professional gambler inevitable. It was a time of almost unlimited personal freedom in a tolerant society, with few to call gambling a sin, a crime, or a folly. The American public was introduced to the frontier gambler very early when a number of them became folk heroes and were interviewed in the popular press of the time. Later, fictional characters made known the western gambler stereotype now seen in movies and on television. Seeking to separate the myth from the reality, Robert K. DeArment gives us more than fiction in this book. Here we meet the long vanished and almost forgotten historical frontier gamblers who, between the years 1850 and 1910, were to be found playing their trade in every settlement from the Gulf of Mexico to the Klondike, Not many found fortunes, but some discovered at the tables an exciting way of life, a calling true and real for them as the law, medicine, or the clergy was for others. DeAement’s research into the lives of the well-known and less-known frontier gamblers provide a story replete with the color and excitement if the Old West. The Good Guys, the Bad Guys, and their women—wives, mistresses, and colleagues in gambling establishments—are here, honestly described in a refreshing, readable manner.

Max Egremont, author of Some Desperate Glory, tells stories from the "Glass Wall" between Europe and Asia. Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic region. Caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated, small nations like Latvia and Estonia were for centuries the subjects of conquests and domination as foreign colonizers claimed control of the territory and its inhabitants, along with their religion, government, and culture. The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters—contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous—who have lived and fought in the Baltic, western Europe’s easternmost stronghold. Too often the destiny of this region has seemed to be to serve as the front line in other people’s wars. By telling the stories of warriors and victims, of philosophers and barons, of poets and artists, of rebels and emperors, and of others who lived through years of turmoil and violence, Max Egremont sets forth a brilliant account of a long-overlooked region, on a frontier whose limits may still be in doubt.

This third volume in The Lymond Chronicles, the highly renowned series of historical novels takes place in 1551, when Francis Crawford of Lymond is dispatched to embattled Malta, to assist the Knights of Hospitallers in defending the island against the Turks. But shortly the swordsman and scholar discovers that the greatest threat to the Knights lies within their own ranks, where various factions vie secretly for master.

The conversion of the lands on the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea by Germans, Danes and Swedes in the period from 1150 to 1400 represented the last great struggle between Christianity and paganism on the European continent, but for the indigenous peoples of Finland, Livonia, Prussia, Lithuania and Pomerania, it was also a period of wider cultural conflict and transformation. This collection explores the theme of clash of cultures from a variety of perspectives, discussing the nature and ideology of crusading in the medieval Baltic region, the struggle between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and the cultural confrontation that accompanied the process of conversion.