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The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York
The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful, entertaining, and surprisingly true story of how in the summer of 1835 a series of articles in the Sun, the first of the city’s “penny papers,” convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited Six articles, purporting to reveal the lunar discoveries made by a world-famous British astronomer, described the life found on the moon—including unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and, strangest of all, four-foot-tall flying man-bats. The series quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era. And the Sun, a brash working-class upstart less than two years old, had become the most widely read newspaper in the world. Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life—the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. The book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, author of the moon series (who never intended it to be a hoax at all); a fledgling showman named P.T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work. An exhilarating narrative history of a city on the cusp of greatness and a nation newly united by affordable newspapers, The Sun and the Moon may just be the strangest true story you’ve ever read. .
Price: $15.00
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The Art of Dueling: 17th Century Rapier as Taught by Salvatore Fabris
During the Renaissance, rapier-dueling and fencing evolved into one of the most deadly and effective of Western martial arts. Salvator Fabris (1544-1618), a Grand Master from Padua, Italy, became arguably the most Internationally-celebrated teacher of this style. The roster of his princely pupils included the Archbishop of Bremen and the King of Denmark, under whose patronage he published his exceptional rapier-fencing manual Lo Schermo, overo Scienza d’Arme (On fencing, or martial knowledge). Fabris’ manual became an instant-bestseller around European fencing circles: it was re-printed continually from 1606 to 1713, translated into several languages, imitated and even plagiarized as Fabris’ style took the continent by storm. Chivalry Bookshelf is proud to present Fabris’ manual in modern English, translated and edited by experienced rapierist and leading Fabris researcher Tom Leoni. Western martial artists and fencing historians alike will delight in reading this great treatise that includes detailed instruction on: • Fencing with the rapier (theory and practice)
• Fencing with the rapier and left-hand dagger (theory and practice)
• Fencing with the rapier and cloak (theory and practice)
• Advanced techniques on how to defeat the opponent without stopping in guard
• Disarms, cape-throws and fighting off a dagger-wielding attacker No other Master is as thorough and systematic as Fabris in defining the tactics, the techniques and the mechanics of this martial system; furthermore, the language used by the author is amazingly "modern" in nature, resulting in a text that is very easy to read and understand. The book is graced with the original didactical illustration by court painter Ian Halbeeck and others, making it as valuable to the modern student as it was to the dueling gentleman of the 1600’s. Our edition also includes a technical rapier glossary, a biographical sketch of Fabris within his cultural context and a valuable introduction by Classical fencing Master Sean Hayes. There is no modern interpretation that can come close to explaining rapier fencing as well as the words of Fabris, an author who is gaining more and more enthusiastic followers in today’s Western Martial Arts’ world. This is a testament to his style, which is dynamic, athletic, strikingly baroque, and is as effective as only a refined art can be..
Price: $25.05
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Gentlemen's Blood: A History of Dueling
The medieval justice of trial by combat evolved into the private duel by sword and pistol, with thousands of honorable men-and not-so-honorable women-giving lives and limbs to wipe out an insult or prove a point. The duel was essential to private, public, and political life, and those who followed the elaborate codes of procedure were seldom prosecuted and rarely convicted-for, in fact, they were obeying a grand old tradition. Based on her fascinating 1997 Smithsonian article, Barbara Holland's Gentlemen's Blood is the first trade book to trace the remarkable, often gruesome, sometimes comical history of the Western tradition of defending one's honor. .
Price: $3.26
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Dueling Eagles: Reinterpreting the U. S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848
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Forensics Under Fire: Are Bad Science and Dueling Experts Corrupting Criminal Justice?
Television shows like CSI, Forensic Files, and The New Detectives make it look so easy. A crime-scene photographer snaps photographs, a fingerprint technician examines a gun, uniformed officers seal off a house while detectives gather hair and blood samples, placing them carefully into separate evidence containers. In a crime laboratory, a suspect's hands are meticulously examined for gunshot residue. An autopsy is performed in order to determine range and angle of the gunshot and time-of-death evidence. Dozens of tests and analyses are performed and cross-referenced. A conviction is made. Another crime is solved. The credits roll.The American public has become captivated by success stories like this one with their satisfyingly definitive conclusions, all made possible because of the wonders of forensic science. Unfortunately, however, popular television dramas do not represent the way most homicide cases in the United States are actually handled. Crime scenes are not always protected from contamination; physical evidence is often packaged improperly, lost, or left unaccounted for; forensic experts are not always consulted; and mistakes and omissions on the autopsy table frequently cut investigations short or send detectives down the wrong investigative path.In "Forensics Under Fire", Jim Fisher makes a compelling case that these and other problems in the practice of forensic science allow offenders to escape justice and can also lead to the imprisonment of innocent people. Bringing together examples from a host of high-profile criminal cases and familiar figures, such as the JonBenet Ramsey case and Dr. Henry Lee who presented physical evidence in the O. J. Simpson trial, along with many lesser known but fascinating stories, Fisher presents daunting evidence that forensic science has a long way to go before it lives up to its potential and the public's expectations..
Price: $14.42
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Dueling Princes: The Calypso Chronicles, Book 3 (Calypso Chronicles)
Dating Britain’s royal Prince Freddie has made Year Eleven at St. Augustine’s the best one so far for Calypso Kelly. Together with best friends Star and Georgina, and new chums Portia and Indie, LA-born Calypso at last seems to have everything she’s dreamed of…or does she? With the national fencing trials coming up, balancing school, friendships, and a royal romance is a lot harder than she imagined. Something will have to give, but what—or whom—will it be? Picking up where Stealing Princes left off, this funny, fast-paced third book chronicling the life and times of Calypso Kelly will not disappoint. .
Price: $4.34
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Dueling Chefs: A Vegetarian and a Meat Lover Debate the Plate (At Table)
One eats meat. The other doesn’t. Both are professional chefs. And both have recipes that make a deliciously persuasive case for each chef’s point of view. In a delightful culinary turn on “he said, she said,” dueling chefs Maggie Pleskac and Sean Carmichael engage in a delectable debate over the merits of the cuisines of vegetarians and carnivores in the form of recipe one-upmanship in which only the reader is sure to win. Between entertaining banter and edifying discussion of exciting ingredients, Pleskac and Carmichael challenge each other—and cooks everywhere—with eighty recipes as creative (and mouthwatering) as Beef Brisket with Blueberry BBQ Sauce and Jackfruit Pineapple BBQ on a Bun. Lobster and falafel, curried eggs and smoked halibut, tempeh and quinoa, stuffed capon breast and chickpeas in coconut sauce, goulash and salmon cakes and Bolshevik Beet and Blue Gratin: whatever diet suits your fancy, the dueling chefs have dishes to make your days and nights as delightful as your taste buds can bear. (20081001).
Price: $15.89
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Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain
Early modern Spain has long been viewed as having a culture obsessed with honor, where a man resorted to violence when his or his wife’s honor was threatened, especially through sexual disgrace This book—the first to closely examine honor and interpersonal violence in the era—overturns this idea, arguing that the way Spanish men and women actually behaved was very different from the behavior depicted in dueling manuals, law books, and “honor plays” of the period. Drawing on criminal and other records to assess the character of violence among non-elite Spaniards, historian Scott K. Taylor finds that appealing to honor was a rhetorical strategy, and that insults, gestures, and violence were all part of a varied repertoire that allowed both men and women to decide how to dispute issues of truth and reputation. .
Price: $37.93
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The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France
As the huge crowd seethed with pent-up excitement, the two deadly enemies studied each other intently, their breath hot behind their visors. Each sought the other’s death as fire and water seek each other’s annihilation. The walled field, at first a prison, now became a crucible where one man would be destroyed and the other purged in the name of justice. They would fight not only without quarter, but also without rules. And a horrible fate awaited the lady if her husband should lose . . . The gripping, atmospheric true story of the “duel to end all duels” in medieval France: a trial by combat pitting a knight against a squire accused of violating the knight’s beautiful young wife
In 1386, a few days after Christmas, a huge crowd gathers at a Paris monastery to watch the two men fight a duel to the death meant to “prove” which man’s cause is right in God’s sight. The dramatic true story of the knight, the squire, and the lady unfolds during the devastating Hundred Years War between France and England, as enemy troops pillage the land, madness haunts the French court, the Great Schism splits the Church, Muslim armies threaten Christendom, and rebellion, treachery, and plague turn the lives of all into toys of Fortune.
At the heart of the tale is Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight who returns from combat in Scotland to find his wife, Marguerite, accusing Jacques LeGris, her husband’s old friend and fellow courtier, of brutally raping her. The knight takes his cause before the teenage King Charles VI, the highest judge in France. Amid LeGris’s vociferous claims of innocence and doubts about the now pregnant Marguerite’s charges (and about the paternity of her child), the deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” that leaves her fate, too, in the balance. For if her husband and champion loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser.
Carrouges and LeGris, in full armor, eventually meet on a walled field in Paris before a massive crowd that includes the king and many nobles of the realm. A fierce fight on horseback and then on foot ensues during which both combatants suffer wounds—but only one fatal. The violent and tragic episode was notorious in its own time because of the nature of the alleged crime, the legal impasse it provoked, and the resulting trial by combat, an ancient but increasingly suspect institution that was thereafter abolished.
Based on extensive research in Normandy and Paris, The Last Duel brings to life a colorful, turbulent age and three unforgettable characters caught in a fatal triangle of crime, scandal, and revenge. It is at once a moving human drama, a captivating detective story, and an engrossing work of historical intrigue. .
Price: $7.96
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