'...an important contribution to scholarship on the early modern Ottoman-Habsburg frontiers; it is based on significant original research...After reading Stein's book, his audience will never again see Ottoman fortresses simply as enclaves on a map, tallied up in the win or loss column, but as centers of strategy and planning that involved both local arrangements and central government interventions. ... Read moreThere is wealth of detail here on material varying from captive taking to raids as an economic activity to recruitment. There is also revealing information about the service and activities of religious officials in the garrisons. This work will appeal particularly to military historians and to those interested in Ottoman and European history on both sides of the frontier.' Professor Palmira Brummett, University of Tennessee Show Less