Book picks similar to
Unsolved Mysteries by Colin Wilson
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The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from My Life as a Forensic Psychologist
Kerry Daynes - 2019
The job: to delve into the psyche of convicted men and women to try to understand what lies behind their often brutal actions. Follow in the footsteps of Kerry Daynes, one of the most sought-after forensic psychologists in the business and consultant on major police investigations. Kerry's job has taken her to the cells of maximum-security prisons, police interview rooms, the wards of secure hospitals and the witness box of the court room. Her work has helped solve a cold case, convict the guilty and prevent a vicious attack. Spending every moment of your life staring into the darker side of life comes with a price. Kerry's frank memoir gives an unforgettable insight into the personal and professional dangers in store for a female psychologist working with some of the most disturbing men and women.
Fast Eddie: My 20 Years on the Run as Britain's Most Wanted Man
Eddie Maher - 2017
The moment in crime history that one of Britain's most audacious thefts ever took place and the legend of 'Fast Eddie' was created.This is the story of how Securicor guard Eddie Maher managed to pull off a £1.2 million heist, fled the country despite every port being closed, spawned an international manhunt, and managed to evade capture for 20 years. As Britain's Most Wanted Man, he led 30 detectives, FBI and Interpol on a wild goose chase across the USA.Dubbed 'Fast Eddie' by the press, he was always one step ahead and after two decades on the run with his family using a series of of aliases and identities, Eddie began to think he'd committed the perfect crime until a cruel and dramatic betrayal proved otherwise...Like a Hollywood movie script and told in full for the first time, Fast Eddie is the compelling story of how an ordinary British man became America's most notorious fugitive.
Bastiat Collection
Frédéric Bastiat - 2007
This restoration project has yielded a collection to treasure. After years of hard work and preparation, we can only report that it is an emotionally thrilling moment to finally offer to the general public. Claude Frédéric Bastiat was an economist and publicist of breathtaking intellectual energy and massive historical influence. He was born in Bayonne, France on June 29th, 1801. After the middle-class Revolution of 1830, Bastiat became politically active and was elected Justice of the Peace in 1831 and to the Council General (county-level assembly) in 1832. He was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848. Bastiat was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France. Bastiat wrote sporadically starting in the 1830s, but in 1844 he launched his amazing publishing career when an article on the effects of protectionism on the French and English people was published in the Journal des Economistes which was held to critical acclaim. The bulk of his remarkable writing career that so inspired the early generation of English translators and so many more is contained in this collection. If we were to take the greatest economists from all ages and judge them on the basis of their theoretical rigor, their influence on economic education, and their impact in support of the free-market economy, then Frédéric Bastiat would be at the top of the list. These volumes bring together his greatest works and represents the early generation of English translations. These translators were like Bastiat himself, people from the private sector who had a love of knowledge and truth and who altered their careers to vigorously pursue intellectual ventures, scholarly publishing, and advocacy of free trade. The collection consists of three sections, the first of which contains his best-known essays. In That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, Bastiat equips the reader to become an economist in the first paragraph and then presents the story of the broken window where a hoodlum is thought to create jobs and prosperity by breaking windows. Bastiat solves the quandary of prosperity via destruction by noting that while the apparent prosperity is seen, what is unseen is that which would have been produced had the windows not been broken. The second section is Bastiat s Economic Sophisms, a collection of 35 articles on the errors of protectionism broadly conceived. Here Bastiat shows his mastery of the methods of argumentation, using basic logic and taking arguments to their logical extreme to demonstrate and ridicule them as obvious fallacies. In his Negative Railroad Bastiat argues that if an artificial break in a railroad causes prosperity by creating jobs for boatmen, porters, and hotel owners, then there should be not one break, but many, and indeed the railroad should be just a series of breaks a negative railroad. The third section is Bastiat's Economic Harmonies which was hastily written before his death in 1850 and is considered incomplete. Here he demonstrates that the interests of everyone in society are in harmony to the extent that property rights are respected. Because there are no inherent conflicts in the market, government intervention is unnecessary. Here we find a powerful but sadly neglected defense of the main thesis of old-style liberalism: that society and economy are capable of self-managing. Unless this insight is understood and absorbed, a person can never really come to grips with the main meaning of liberty.
History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
Brad Meltzer - 2013
Is Fort Knox empty? Why was Hitler so intent on capturing the Roman 'Spear of Destiny'? What's the government hiding in Area 51? Where did the Confederacy's $19 million in gold and silver go at the end of the Civil War? And did Lee Harvey Oswald really act alone? Meltzer sifts through the evidence; weighs competing theories; separates what we know to be true with what's still--and perhaps forever--unproved or unprovable; and in the end, decodes the mystery, arriving at the most likely solution. Along the way we meet Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Nazi propagandists, and the real DB Cooper.
Into the Blast - The True Story of D.B. Cooper
Skipp Porteous - 2010
as 'Dan Cooper' leaped from the aft stairway of a Boeing 727 after demanding four parachutes and $200,000 in cash. He was never seen again, and nearly forty years later, he has never been identified - until now. During the initial investigation, few in law enforcement suspected that the hijacker could actually be an employee of the airline, and that was their mistake. Kenneth Peter Christiansen, a former World War II paratrooper and later a purser for Northwest Airlines, was the man who pulled off the boldest unsolved crime in history. Skipp Porteous of Sherlock Investigations, New York, and Robert Blevins of Adventure Books of Seattle present the case that Christiansen and Cooper were one and the same. Into The Blast shows how Kenny Christiansen planned the hijacking of NWA Flight 305, what motivated him to do it, who helped him on the ground, and what he did with the money afterward. More than thirty pictures, as well as interviews with the witnesses, reveals the truth at last in this fascinating book.
Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House
Rachel Maddow - 2020
Agnew, Richard Nixon's second-in-command. Long on firebrand rhetoric and short on political experience, Agnew had carried out a bribery and extortion ring in office for years, when--at the height of Watergate--three young federal prosecutors discovered his crimes and launched a mission to take him down before it was too late. Before Nixon's downfall made way for Agnew to ascend to the presidency himself. Agnew did everything he could to bury their investigation: dismissing it as a "witch hunt," riling up his partisan base, making the press the enemy, and, with a crumbling circle of loyalists, scheming to obstruct justice.In this blockbuster account, Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz detail the investigation that exposed Agnew's crimes, the attempts at a cover-up - which involved future President George H. W. Bush - and the bargain that forced Agnew's resignation but also spared him years in federal prison. Based on the hit podcast, Bag Man expands and deepens the story of Spiro Agnew's scandal and its lasting influence on our politics, our media, and our understanding of what it takes to confront a criminal in the White House.
The Browns Blues: Two Decades of Utter Frustration: Why Everything Kept Going Wrong for the Cleveland Browns
Terry Pluto - 2018
And their fans had ulcers. Now, veteran sports columnist Terry Pluto explains why everything kept going wrong. This detailed report on two decades of disappointment takes a behind-the-scenes look at upheaval in the front office, frustration on the field, and headaches and heartache in the stands. His earlier book False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail told how the NFL hamstrung the new franchise. Who could have predicted the limping would last 19 years? This book picks up the story. Season after season began with hope in spring for the NFL draft (“the Browns’ version of the Super Bowl,” a fan called it) . . . often a new coach or GM or quarterback (or all three) . . . then the losses . . . and back to rebuilding. Pluto reviews all the major moves—draft choices and deals, hiring and firing and reshuffling—and the results. If you’re a Browns fan who wants to understand what went wrong with your team, this is the place to start. Includes heartfelt and humorous opinions contributed by fans.
Deadhouse: Life in a Coroner's Office
John Temple - 2005
Ed Strimlan is a doctor who never got to practice medicine. Instead he discovers how people died. Mike Chichwak is a stolid ex-paramedic, respected around the office for his compassion and doggedness. Tiffani Hunt is twenty-one, a single mother who questions whether she wants to spend her nights around dead bodies.All three deputy coroners share one trait: a compulsive curiosity. A good thing too because any observation at a death scene can prove meaningful. A bag of groceries standing on a kitchen counter, the milk turning sour. A broken lamp lying on the carpet of an otherwise tidy living room. When they approach a corpse, the investigators consider everything. Is the victim face-up or down? How stiff are the limbs? Are the hands dirty or clean? By the time they bag the body and load it into the coroner's wagon, Tiffani, Ed, and Mike have often unearthed intimate details that are unknown even to the victim's family and friends.The intrigues of investigating death help make up for the bad parts of the job. There are plenty of burdens--grief-stricken families, decomposed bodies, tangled local politics, and gore. And maybe worst of all is the ever-present reminder of mortality and human frailness.Deadhouse also chronicles the evolution of forensic medicine, from early rituals performed over corpses found dead to the controversial advent of modern forensic pathology. It explains how pathologists "read" bullet wounds and lacerations, how someone dies from a drug overdose or a motorcycle crash or a drowning, and how investigators uncover the clues that lead to the truth.
Predators in the Woods
Stephen Young - 2014
True Stories. The woods can be tranquil and enchanting, yet there are moments when everything goes quiet and time seems to stop, and the hairs on the back of your neck start to stand up, and you could swear there’s something out there in the trees, just watching you. Suddenly everything goes quiet and that’s when the fear sets in as a strange buzzing seems to fill your ears, and your eyes are searching everywhere for a hidden predator. A powerful, menacing and sinister force is nearby and you can sense the imminent danger. Then it shows itself. And that’s when the panic sets in.... Contents include; The Predator Effect; The Stick Men; Shifters; Something on two legs; Things with Wings; A new Sentient Intelligence. Excerpts; 'Somehow 'something' had got past me without being seen. Then suddenly the quiet was filled with a blood-curdling shriek; it was the most primal of cries I'd ever heard. It seemed human, animal, and spirit; and completely evil. It was hard to pin down; it was ethereal. I tried to shrink to invisibility...' 'She sent a text saying, "Something is wrong here. The woods just went dead silent...its odd." She thought it was possible a panther or coyote was approaching. As her eyes roamed the area, she suddenly noticed a strange visual effect that seemed to be moving...' 'The film showed a mysterious black mass of no definite shape. It was moving. It was crawling fast. It moved with speed, faster than any animal.' 'The entity was blurry and any features could not be clearly seen, as though it were masking its true form.' "At first it was jet black. He said that it was walking in a peculiar way; that it made long exaggerated strides..." 'They said that it seemed to be moving and that it was in one spot one moment and then instantaneously it would appear in a different spot.' "Terrible sounds were coming out of the forest. I couldn't compare them to anything I've heard before." "It took off running, but not like any human or any animal. It ran with its whole body bending and contorting, extremely fast." 'The moon lit up the figure and she could see that it had the shape of a man, at least seven feet tall, but..." PREDATORS IN THE WOODS...True Stories. Stephenyoungauthor@hotmail.com facebook: Steph Young (Author)
Nightmareland: Travels at the Borders of Sleep, Dreams, and Wakefulness
Lex "Lonehood" Nover - 2019
It was only some sixty years ago that researchers discovered REM, the rapid-eye-movement cycle that's associated with dreams. In Nightmareland, Lex Lonehood Nover travels into the eerie borderlands where the unconscious, dreams, and strange entities intermingle under the cover of night, revealing wider and hidden aspects of ourselves, from the savage and frightening to the astounding and sublime.Encompassing accepted medical phenomena such as sleep paralysis, parasomnias, and Ambien zombies, and the true-crime casebook of those who kill while sleepwalking, to supernatural elements such as the incubus, alien abduction, and psychic attacks, Nover brings readers on an extraordinary journey through history, folklore, and science, to help us understand what happens when we sleep.
BEHIND THE DOOR: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story
Mandy Wiener - 2014
Over the ensuing weeks, as Pistorius appeared in court and applied for bail, every detail that emerged was analysed, debated, justified and digested. South Africa and the world in general were haunted by the events as they were repeated and discussed at length. Public perception vacillated from version to version and from hour to hour.Behind the Door is a compelling narrative that unpacks the true facts of the story, as revealed in the courtroom and beyond during the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius and as told to the authors in several exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes briefings. It looks at the characters involved, relates the courtroom interactions and dramas, the construction of each side’s argument, the analysis of forensic and circumstantial evidence and exchanges between the personalities, as well as a broader look at violence and criminal justice in South Africa.Vivid and gripping, insightful and authoritative, Behind the Door is the book to read on the Reeva and Oscar story.Behind the Door is being published in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries by Pan Macmillan UK, in the United States and Canada (as One Tragic Night) by St Martin’s Press and worldwide in Spanish by Ediciones Urano.
Mafia Boss Sam Giancana: The Rise and Fall of a Chicago Mobster
Susan McNicoll - 2015
Born in 1908, in The Patch, Chicago, Giancana joined the Forty-Two gang of lawless juvenile punks in 1921 and quickly proved himself as a skilled 'wheel man' (or getaway driver), extortionist and vicious killer. Called up to the ranks of the Outfit, he reputedly held talks with the CIA about assassinating Fidel Castro, shared a girlfriend with John F. Kennedy and had friends in high places, including Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Marilyn Monroe and, some say, the Kennedys, although he fell out with them.The story of Sam Giancana will overturn many of your beliefs about America during the Kennedy era. If you want to know Giancana's role in the brother's deaths, and more of the intrigue surrounding that of Marilyn Monroe, this book will fill you in on the murky lives of many shady characters who really ruled the day, both in Chicago and elsewhere.
Madame Lalaurie, Mistress of the Haunted House
Carolyn Morrow Long - 2012
Anderson, author of Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Conjure: A Handbook “Explores a pivotal event in a city that drips legends from every pore. In the end, Long reminds us that history has just one indisputable ‘truth’—the past was a complex world whose deeds continue to haunt us.”—Elizabeth Shown Mills, author of Isle of Canes “A page-turner. History, folklore, myth—this book has it all, like almost everything in New Orleans.”—Nathalie Dessens, author of From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans The legend of Madame Delphine Lalaurie, a wealthy society matron and accused slave torturer, has haunted New Orleans for nearly two hundred years. Her macabre tale is frequently retold, and her French Quarter mansion has been referred to as “the most haunted house in the city.” Rumors that Lalaurie abused her slaves were already in circulation when fire broke out in the kitchen and slave quarters of her home in 1834. Bystanders intent on rescuing anyone still inside forced their way past Lalaurie and her husband into the burning service wing. Once inside, they discovered seven “wretched negroes” starved, chained, and mutilated. The crowd’s temper quickly shifted from concern to outrage, assuming that the Lalauries had been willing to allow their slaves to perish in the flames rather than risk discovery of the horrific conditions in which they were kept. Forced to flee the city, Delphine Lalaurie’s guilt went unquestioned during her lifetime, and tales of her actions have become increasingly fanciful and grotesque over the decades. Stories of perverted tortures, of burying slaves alive, of cutting off their limbs have continued to plague her legacy. A meticulous researcher of New Orleans history, Carolyn Long disentangles the threads of fact and legend that have intertwined over the decades. Was Madame Lalaurie a sadistic abuser? Mentally ill? Or merely the victim of an unfair and sensationalist press? Using carefully documented eyewitness testimony, archival documents, and family letters, Long recounts Lalaurie’s life from legal troubles before the fire through the scandal of her exile to France to her death in Paris in 1849. As she demonstrated in her biography of Marie Laveau, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess, Long’s ability to tease the truth from the knots of sensationalism is uncanny. Proving once again that history is more fascinating than elaborated fiction, she opens wide the door on the legend of Madame Lalaurie’s haunted house.
Darwin's Odyssey: The Voyage of the Beagle (Kindle Single)
Kevin Jackson - 2013
For five years in his mid-twenties, he sailed on the BEAGLE around the world, exploring jungles, climbing mountains, trekking across deserts. With every new landfall, he had new adventures: he rode through bandit country, was thrown into jail by revolutionaries, took part in an armed raid with marines, survived two earthquakes, hunted and fished. He suffered the terrible cold and rain of Tierra del Fuego, the merciless heat of the Australian outback and the inner pangs of heartbreak. He also made the discoveries that finally led him to formulate his theory of Natural Selection as the driving force of evolution. The five-year voyage of the BEAGLE was the basis for all Darwin's later work; but it also turned him from a friendly idler into the greatest scientist of his century. Kevin Jackson is a writer, broadcaster and film-maker. His most recent book is Constellation of Genius: 1922 and All That Jazz (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2013). He lives in Cambridge, England.
999 CSI: Blood, Threats and Fears
Larry Henderson - 2020
Larry, whose career with London’s Metropolitan Police started in 1971, a time when police officers were more than a little sceptical of science, soon proved his worth and attended every kind of crime scene, from terrorism to rape and from blackmail to murder - before he became the head of the Flying Squad’s forensic team during the busiest and most dangerous period of the legendary outfit’s existence. Soon, Larry was caught up in shoot-outs, pavement ambushes, record-breaking drug deals and tiger kidnappings, confronting some of the UK’s most terrifying villains along the way. Larry’s groundbreaking work features some of the UK’s most notorious crimes - a key piece of forensic evidence from one of Larry’s murder cases is displayed at Scotland Yard’s infamous Crime Museum. At turns breathtaking, fascinating, hilarious and tragic, 999 CSI opens up a truly astonishing world that most people never get to see, a world filled with cruelty, matched only by the courage of those who work tirelessly for justice.