Be careful, there's a lot of nonsense written about chess history. If you are looking for something very accurate (some would argue obsessively so), I suggest Edward Winter's column on chesscafe.com (http://www.chesscafe.com/winter/winter.htm) and his book, "Kings Commoners and Knaves".
If you're looking for something more entertaining (Winter would rather be right than be fun), Bill Wall's site has lots of good stuff. I don't know of anything on it that's not true, but I don't think he's attempting to bring the same level of academic rigor to it:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/chess.htm