Hi,

I've spent a ton of time lately investigating a famously savage duel that happened over 400 years ago. The resulting book is almost ready, so it's time to show you the cover!

One Thursday night in France, sometime around 1597, a young man climbed out of his mother's château window to go and fight a duel. He was already an accomplished swordsman, and he was wearing a very fine hat, but he did not survive.

The quarrel began with a satirical poem, a mutual enthusiasm for violence, and a grey beaver hat sent as a challenge. It ended with two men dead, another horribly wounded, and the survivor riding away wearing the hat that had started it all.

The story was retold for centuries, and in the process got thoroughly mangled. People who had died somehow survived, details changed, and historians made things up. So I went back to the original sources to find out what actually happened.

The result is The Duel of the Hat: How a Great Story Became Bad History, which includes the story as I think it really happened, an investigation into the people, places, weapons, and events involved, and translations and transcriptions of the most important sources, including one lengthy article that has never been published online in any form (I’ll get it up on my blog soon). Oh, so many footnotes.

The early-access PDF will be available on Monday. I'm inviting readers to help me catch errors, identify confusing passages, and point out anything I've missed before I publish the finished book at the end of November. Everyone who buys the early-access PDF will receive the finished ebook when it's ready, plus a discount voucher for the price of the PDF off whichever print edition they prefer (paperback or hardback). And if you send me feedback and want a name-check, I'll include you in the acknowledgments. Expect an email announcement early next week.