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Miscellaneous The Knights Next Door   by Patrick O'Donnell $21.05 / iUniverse / 2004 Not everyone has been initiated into the largest medieval re-enactment group in the world, the Society for Creative Anachronism’s (SCA) mysteries, nor does everyone care to be. Thankfully, author Patrick O’Donnell avoids these rhetorical faults in his book The Knights Next Door. O’Donnell is a professional journalist by trade and his experience serves him well, as he explains this unique subculture’s ideas via profiles on various SCAdians, such as stick-fighter Tom Noble, who is involved in the tournament to become king of the Middle Kingdom; a group of fighters called Darkyard from Ohio who loosely re-create a Roman legion of soldiers, as well as assorted merchants, craftspeople, and teachers Never once does O’Donnell wax rhapsodic, or make the SCA out to be more than a fun but slightly odd hobby. As a result, the Society comes off as an amiable subculture of intelligent but eccentric people, rather than as an abattoir of socially frustrated misfits, as is usually depicted in books and films about the SCA. The Knights Next Door is a book that new SCAdians should give to their family when they ask what, exactly, it is that they do for two weeks in Pennsylvania every August at Pennsic. It is also a book that all aspiring modern medievalist writers could learn from. — Ken Mondschein

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