Book picks similar to
Suicide in the Middle Ages I: The Violent Against Themselves by Alexander Murray
history
medieval
suicide
mental-illness
Netaji: Living Dangerously
Kingshuk Nag - 2016
Did Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose die in an air crash in Taihoku (Taipei, Taiwan) on 18 August 1945? Was he sent off to Siberia by Joseph Stalin? Did he die there? Or did he escape? Or was he let off, eventually to make his way back to India? Was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba of Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh? If so, how did he find his way back? Why did Bose leave India when he did? Was it on account of his political approach, which was opposed by the then high command of the Congress party that wanted a quick transfer of power from the British?The past comes alive as journalist and author Kingshuk Nag seeks answers to these and related questions at a time when there is a considerable renewal of interest in Netaji’s fate with old records tumbling out, the latest being the declassification of files by the government.Netaji: Living Dangerously is a riveting account of the life of one of India’s most charismatic leaders and an in-depth analysis of one of the world’s best kept secrets.
Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe
Louise Collis - 1964
For history and biography lovers, the 15th-century life and travels of the extraordinary Margery Kempe, who left her family to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
The Law Killers
Alexander McGregor - 2009
But only when their rage explodes and unspeakable crimes are committed do we realise we hold them in our midst. Some are unpredictable psychopaths, others achieve notoriety after a moment of madness when a single out-of-character act changes their lives forever. One thing is for certain, homicide comes in many guises - the only thing most have in common is a corpse. In The Law Killers, journalist Alexander McGregor examines some of the people and deeds, which have terrorised Dundonian communities. Having reported on many of them first-hand, he has unique insight into the cases and they are as chilling as they are compelling. The father who wanted to go one better than his double-killer son...and did. The groom who promised to love, honour and cherish both his brides...before he strangled them. The thirteen-year-old who was almost as much a victim as the child she killed. The trail of slaughter that started with a break-in and ended hundreds of miles away after an escaped convict killed again...and again and again.The unsolved murder of the wealthy spinster who led a secret life. The trail of dead women in the life of a social worker who thought he could outwit the police...and nearly did
Sins of the Father: The Untold Story Behind Schapelle Corby's Ill-fated Drug Run
Eamonn Duff - 2011
A reckless father, his dark past, an Adelaide drug trafficker and the Gold Coast beauty school dropout who kept her mouth shut. This is the explosive untold story of Schapelle Corby and how she took the rap for her father's drug syndicate.The result of a three year investigation, Sins of the Father returns to the beginning of Australia's most famous drug case, to a time when nobody had ever heard the name Schapelle Corby. Finally, the missing pieces of the jigsaw fall into place as we are led, step by step, through the important weeks, days, and hours leading up to her dramatic arrest.
A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy
Sue Klebold - 2016
Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently? These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts. Filled with hard-won wisdom and compassion, A Mother’s Reckoning is a powerful and haunting book that sheds light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. And with fresh wounds from the recent Newtown and Charleston shootings, never has the need for understanding been more urgent. All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues.
The Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College Football
Jim Dent - 1957
This awesome record was the product of a genius and masterful coach named Bud Wilkinson and the spirited young men he led. The Undefeated will detail all the thrilling action on the field during this record winning streak, but it will also reveal all the behind-the-scenes tumult and pressure swirling around it. Dent presents an absorbing character study of the brilliant, complex coach who engineered it all - Bud Wilkinson, the on-field genius whoses starched-shirt public persona hid a man of many secrets and an in-depth look at a state and its people still suffering from a Depression hangover and an identity crisis, who took up the Sooners football banner almost as a religious cause. Through it all, the young men who accomplished this amazing feat shine in vivid life.
Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps:Volume 1 - New York City
Joe Bruno - 2011
Although Italian-American criminals are covered, this is not just another Italian mafia book. The book covers the Jewish gangsters as well (who truly were the pioneers of organized crime) and the Irish gangs, who were one of the first ethnic groups to run the New York City rackets. Joe even presents a few "lady gangsters" too.Most of all, “ Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City" is easy to read. The short-chapter format is a stroke of genius. It is interesting, informative, entertaining, and to the point. You won't be bored reading it. Joe Bruno has hit the mark in presenting Old New York the way it really was. Rough and bloody! Mathew J. Mari - Criminal Attorney
Raising Hell: Backstage Tales from the Lives of Metal Legends
Jon Wiederhorn - 2020
The book contains the crazy, funny and sometimes horrifying anecdotes musicians have told about a lifestyle both invigorating and at times self-destructive. The metal genre has always been populated by colorful individuals who have thwarted convention and lived by their own rules. For many, vice has been virtue, and the opportunity to record albums and tour has been an invitation to push boundaries and open a Pandora ’s Box of wild experiences. Even before they joined bands, the urge for metalheads to rebel and a seemingly contradictory need to belong was ingrained in their DNA. Whether they were oddballs who didn’t fit in or angry kids from troubled backgrounds, metal gave them a sense of identity and became more than a form of music. From the author of the classic collection of Metal music-making tales Louder Than Hell comes a collection that goes behind the music with the lead singers, guitarists, bassists, drummers, stage hands, roadies, groupies, fans, and more. These are the stories of the parties, the tours, the rage, the joy, . . . the Heavy Metal life!
Six Silent Men, Book Two
Kenn Miller - 1997
It was a bitter pill. After working on their own in Vietnam for more than two years, the Brigade LRRPs were ordered to join forces with the division once again.But even as these formidable hunters and killers were themselves swallowed up by the Screaming Eagles' Division LRPs to eventually become F Co., 58th Infantry, they continued the deadly, daring LRRP tradition. From saturation patrols along the Laotian border to near-suicide missions and compromised positions in the always dangerous A Shau valley, the F/58th unflinchingly faced death every day and became one of the most highly decorated companies in the history of the 101st.
Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors
Peter Ackroyd - 2011
He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past--a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house--and describes in rich prose the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French.With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes the wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. All are brought vividly to life through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers.
Uncle Al Capone - The Untold Story from Inside His Family
Deirdre Marie Capone - 2010
Deirdre Marie Capone offers the portrait of an American family and her favorite Uncle, endlessly depicted as the iconic mastermind behind some of the century s most brutal killings. Filled with never-before published family photos of Al Capone and surprising revelations about the man behind the notorious legend, this book tells the untold story from within the family.- Learn the truth about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre- Learn about Al Capone's role in the only successful escape from Alcatraz- Even get the family recipes for Al Capone's favorite meals- But most importantly, learn about what family life was like for the Capones and what it was like growing up in Chicago with the most notorious of last names.
The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
Dan Jones - 2017
A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity’s holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world’s largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. Then on Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.
Called
Lisa D. Jefferson - 2006
"Called" tells the gripping account of 9/11 from her vantage point. She recalls the moment she took the call from Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93, and when she heard the immortal words, "Let's Roll. She remembers the way that her life was transformed vividly when she responded to the call. Jefferson sends a stirring challenge to all of us--whether it comes during quiet obscurity or international adversity, we must be prepared to answer God's call."
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
John Kelly - 2005
Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story: how many people died; how farm output and trade declined. But statistics can’t convey what it was like to sit in Siena or Avignon and hear that a thousand people a day are dying two towns away. Or to have to chose between your own life and your duty to a mortally ill child or spouse. Or to live in a society where the bonds of blood and sentiment and law have lost all meaning, where anyone can murder or rape or plunder anyone else without fear of consequence.In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the journey of the plague as it traveled from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people—one third of the known population—before it vanished.
Vanished: Cold-Blooded Murder in Steeltown
Jon Wells - 2009
A woman had wanted to leave him. You're not going anywhere, he told her. Later that day, a police officer reports to the house and finds some human tissue and organs in a bag left out for garbage. The person of interest in the case is a steelworker named Sam Pirrera, who lives in the house. But who is the victim? Sam's current estranged wife, Danielle? It is known that they had a stormy relationship; Sam had assaulted her as his coke addiction returned. Forensic detectives find traces of blood in the basement, and then the entire corpse, dismembered, the parts hidden behind a false wall and packed in boxes, each of the parts wrapped and doused in gasoline. The victim's identity is discovered through prints to be a prostitute named Maggie Karer. The dismemberment, defensive mutilation, is so calculated and deliberate, the detectives wonder, are there more victims? But Pirrera's first wife was named Beverly, and a woman named Lesa Davidson shows up at the police station to say she hasn't heard from her daughter-Beverly-in eight years. And Sam's estranged wife, Danielle, who is in fact alive, tells police that Sam had once told her he had killed his first wife and dumped her parts in a vat of molten steel at a steel plant. Detectives now pursue a double murder case, led by veteran homicide detective Peter Abi-Rashed, who had once chased a young Sam Pirrera on the streets of Hamilton's east end many years before. The outcome is shocking - and a mystery remains.