Quick and stimulating to read, but slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different, more transcendent way of looking at our extreme, gritty world.

    McNelly. South Texas was overrun by thieves and outlaws, and over three thousand Mexican guerrillas raided settlers on both sides of the border. McNelly’s Rangers became famous for their often violent and murderous campaigns. Maintaining strict law in the anarchic area was not easy and they quickly gained a reputation as "fire-eating, quarrelsome daredevils”. During this period they made over eleven hundred arrests and killed many more. McNelly ordered them “to have fun, and to carry out a set policy of terrorizing the Mexicans at every opportunity," Jenning’s memoir includes many accounts of these clashes with Mexican guerrillas and records well-known incidents involving McNelly — his battles with the US government and the fight at Las Cuevas with Cortuna and his raiders. Jennings also provides first-hand accounts of scrapes with King Fisher’s outlaw band, John Wesley Hardin, and the families involved in the Taylor-Sutton feud. In an era of cattle thieving and terror, A Texas Ranger follows Jennings through the southern border of Texas and finds a vivid first-hand portrayal of life in the late 19th century in one of the most lawless and violent places in the United States. “If any time of the past was ever vivid and vital enough to live on through mere reporting… it was the time when McNelly’s rangers rode the bloody border of Texas. Hence it is exceedingly fortunate that a man who was to become a skilled reported rode with them and later saw reason for putting down some of the things he had been part of.” — J. Frank Dobie Napoleon Augustus Jennings was born in Philadelphia, the son of a wealthy merchant, on January 11, 1856, and graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He moved to Texas in 1874 and became a ranger, that years chronicled in this book. When his father died in 1878 he returned to Philadelphia and attempted to run the family business, but was smothered by city life. He returned to the West in 1881 as a prospector, miner, stagecoach driver, and sign painter in Colorado. Jennings died in New York on December 15, 1919.

    For the general reader there are many profound insights of great consequence, for example, the passages on women, marriage, and inheritance, or the section on jihad, nearly always completely misunderstood in the press.“The topic is becoming more significant because Islam is the most rapidly growing religion in the world. This book provides a thorough and sophisticated, but at the same time clear-headed and reliable, overview.” ― Kevin Lacey, State University of New York, Binghamton“This survey represents and distills a lifetime of scholarship devoted to the Islamic tradition. In the Introduction, Schimmel remarks that the book follows ‘the traditional view of Islamic history without venturing into the vast field of sociological or political approaches.’ In practice, this translates into a traditional view of Islam as experienced by Muslims. It is difficult to imagine a book that would better represent how most Muslims conceive their own religion. It is likely that Muslims will be most eager to read and quote from this book since it faithfully presents a perspective with which they can identify.” ― Carl W. Ernst, Pomona College

    state of Montana. By late 1863 the remote gold fields and transportation links were rife with outlaws threatening and killing at will. At the end of the year it was estimated that 102 travellers had been murdered. As this became a more frequent occurrence locals began suspecting that these crimes were being carried out by a single group of outlaws, known as "road agents", under the control of Bannack sheriff Henry Plummer. With law enforcement unable to cope or even actively joining the outlaw gang, citizens of this remote part of Montana took the law into their own hands and formed the Vigilance Committee. Between January 4 and February 3, 1864, the vigilantes arrested and summarily executed at least 20 alleged members of Plummer's gang. Thomas Dimsdale was there to witness it all. Read here the gripping true account of popular justice in the Rocky Mountains. His The Vigilantes of Montana first appeared as a series of articles in 1865 editions of the Montana Post, Virginia City's and Montana's first newspaper. Thomas J. Dimsdale who died in 1866 was a member of the Alder Gulch Vigilance Committee and editor of the Montana Post. His early accounts of the Alder Gulch vigilante events are widely cited and the book version of his articles was published in Montana Territory in 1866. Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    But so often, our lives interrupt this precious time. That's why Nancy Leigh DeMoss has written this compelling new book about developing a devotional life that will challenge and invite women into a deeper relationship with Christ.

    Indeed, a remarkable and outstanding world leader. Got to read it. First time ever in paperback.

    Pirates to the U.S. Navy officers who chased them, heroes to the private citizens who shopped for contraband at their well-publicized auctions, the brothers became important members of a filibustering syndicate that included lawyers, bankers, merchants, and corrupt U.S. officials. But this allegiance didn't stop the Laffites from becoming paid Spanish spies, disappearing into the fog of history after selling out their own associates. William C. Davis uncovers the truth about two men who made their names synonymous with piracy and intrigue on the Gulf.

    Don't wait. Climb aboard the rollercoaster today. Read The Last Window-Giraffe as an elaborate, erudite, gut-wrenching belly-laugh at everything that went wrong and all the people who failed to fix it.' Lawrence Norfolk, author of ‘In the Shape of a Boar’This book is about the madness of everyday life under a dictatorship. It shifts in theme and time, testing the borderlines of prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction, history and autobiography - all in the unassuming guise of a child’s ABC. Filled with his own striking photographs, Péter Zilahy gives fascinating insight into whole other universe behind the Iron Curtain. The Last Window-Giraffe is one of the most unusual, beguiling books you will ever read. 'Wonderful!' Victor Pelevin, author of ‘Babylon’ ‘'In these bittersweet pages you will find the fall of the regimes, and the last twenty years of Eastern Europe.' Enrico Remmert, Rolling Stone Magazine 'Péter Zilahy, wanderer, adventurer, initiator of a great many performances and provocations, much resembles Jean-Arthur Rimbaud during the Commune of Paris.' Yuri Andrukhovych, author of ‘Twelve Rings’ and ‘The Secret’

    Esposito is one of America's leading authorities on Islam. Now, in this brilliant portrait of Islam today-- and tomorrow-- he draws on a lifetime of thought and research to provide an accurate, richly nuanced, and revelatory account of the fastest growing religion in the world.Here Esposito explores the major questions and issues that face Islam in the 21st century and that will deeply affect global politics: Is Islam compatible with modern notions of democracy, rule of law, gender equality, and human rights? How representative and widespread is Islamic fundamentalism and the threat of global terrorism? Can Muslim minority communities be loyal citizens in America and Europe? In the midst of these questions Esposito places an important emphasis on the issue of Islamophobia, the threat it poses, and its vast impact on politics and society in the US and Europe. He also turns the mirror on the US and Europe and paints a revealing portrait of how we appear to Muslims.Recent decades have brought extraordinary changes in the Muslim world, and in addressing these issues, Esposito paints a complex picture of Islam in all its diversity--a picture of urgent importance as we face the challenges of the coming century.

    He traveled on foot across Africa from the Skeleton Coast on the southwest tip of the African continent through Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania, until he reached the Indian Ocean. Traversa is the fascinating account of the hardships and hilarity that he experienced during his epic solo journey. Sandham describes his brushes with lions and snakes, land mines and bandits, his two-month battle with a syphilitic donkey, malaria, cockroaches the size of mice, and the other everyday troubles that arise when walking across Africa. Underpinned with the stories of his forerunners--David Livingstone, Sir H. M. Stanley, and Sir Francis Galton, among others--Traversa is the enthralling account of a real-life modern-day adventure against the elements.

    More than 5,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians founded one of the world's oldest civilizations. We know of its pyramids, art, and pharaohs. But what was life really like then? Ordinary citizens in ancient Egypt lived and worked in much the same ways as the average European of the eighteenth century, but ate better, had more practical clothing and lived more comfortably, in houses with patios, latrines, and cooling systems. Through deep investigative research, the authors explore the social and material existence in ancient Egypt-from what people ate and drank to how they worked, lived, played, and prayed. Features color and black-and-white images throughout, along with maps.

    Including the writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), the pioneering aviator Beryl Markham and the troubled socialite Idina Sackville whose life was told in Frances Osborne’s bestselling The Bolter, the Happy Valley set’s notoriety was sealed in 1941 with the sensational – and still unsolved - murder of the Earl of Errol, the investigation of which laid bare the extent of the set’s decadence and irresponsibility, and made for another bestselling book in James Fox’s White Mischief. But what is left now? Juliet Barnes, who has lived in Kenya for many years, has set out to explore Happy Valley in a remarkable and indefatigable archaeological quest to find the homes and haunts of this extraordinary and vanished set of people – grand residences like Clouds up in the hills that once hosted opulent and scandalous parties. With the help of African guides, and guided by the memories of elderly expats she tracks down to the Muthiaga old enough to have first-hand memories of the likes of Idina and Lord Errol and the lives they led, what she finds - ruins reclaimed by luxuriant bush, tumbledown dwellings in which an African family ekes a subsistence living, or even a modest school – is a revelation of the state of modern Africa that makes the gilded era of the Happy Valley set seem even more fantastic. A book to set alongside such singular evocations of Africa and its strange colonial history as The Africa House, Happy Valley: The Biography is a mesmerising blend of travel narrative, social history and personal quest.

    This comprehensive survey is the first to provide a view of African history in the wider context of World History. The text illustrates how Africans have influenced regions beyond the continent's borders, how they have been influenced from outside, and how internal African developments can be compared and contrasted to those elsewhere in the world. Identifying and presenting key debates within the field of African history, this volume encourages students to address the many oversimplified myths regarding the continent and its people. This remains the most accessible, digestible, and relevant text on the subject. Compact and concise, it generates creative knowledge for students to appreciate the nature and essence of the formation of our global community. -- Toyin Falola, University Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin

     She explores his life and legacy as never before, and offers a compelling new window onto the world in which he lived.Tutankhamen ascended to the throne at approximately eight years of age and ruled for only ten years.  Although his reign was brief and many of his accomplishments are now lost to us, it is clear that he was an important and influential king ruling in challenging times.  His greatest achievement was to reverse a slew of radical and unpopular theological reforms instituted by his father and return Egypt to the traditional pantheon of gods.  A meticulous examination of the evidence preserved both within his tomb and outside it allows Tyldesley to investigate Tutankhamen’s family history and to explore the origins of the pervasive legends surrounding Tutankhamen’s tomb.  These legends include Tutankhamen’s “curse”—an enduring myth that reaffirms the appeal of ancient magic in our modern worldA remarkably vivid portrait of this fascinating and often misunderstood ruler, Tutankhamen sheds new light on the young king and the astonishing archeological discovery that earned him an eternal place in popular imagination.

    But not in the world from which the murdered came. All but one were young Coptic Christian migrant workers from Egypt. Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach traveled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction.He finds himself welcomed into simple concrete homes through which swallows dart. Portraits of Jesus and Mary hang on the walls along with roughhewn shrines to now-famous loved ones. Mosebach is amazed time and again as, surrounded by children and goats, the bereaved replay the cruel propaganda video on an iPad. There is never any talk of revenge, but only the pride of having a martyr in the family, a saint in heaven. "The 21" appear on icons crowned like kings, celebrated even as their community grieves. A skeptical Westerner, Mosebach finds himself a stranger in this world in which everything is the reflection or fulfillment of biblical events, and facing persecution with courage is part of daily life.In twenty-one symbolic chapters, each preceded by a picture, Mosebach offers a travelogue of his encounter with a foreign culture and a church that has preserved the faith and liturgy of early Christianity - the "Church of the Martyrs." As a religious minority in Muslim Egypt, the Copts find themselves caught in a clash of civilizations. This book, then, is also an account of the spiritual life of an Arab country stretched between extremism and pluralism, between a rich biblical past and the shopping centers of New Cairo.