I was hooked from A to Z." - James HerbertWho were the Maccabees? A pop group? Or a mother and her seven sons who suffered racking, skinning, burning, amputation and having their tongues pulled out and fried? And what was foot roasting? A way of keeping warm in the winter? Or a technique from the Spanish Inquisition that involved coating the prisoner’s feet in fat and toasting them over hot coals? From Amputation to Zero Tolerance, ‘The A-Z of Punishment & Torture’ is a grisly yet mesmerising compendium of the horrors inflicted on the human body over the centuries.A fascinating social history, it provides as a wealth of weird folklore, such as the power of the hanged man's hand; astounding tales, like Mary Hamilton, the cross-dressing 14-times bigamist; to more recent outrages, such as the use of ‘squassation’ at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “Fascinating from beginning to end.” – Robert Foster, best-selling author of ‘The Lunar Code’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher.

    In this compelling study of true crime, Liverpool's most popular author Tom Slemen recounts some of the most intriguing and baffling murders of Merseyside such as:• The baffling case of the Victorian canned corpse• The magistrate's beautiful granddaughter who was killed by a crazed admirer• The condemned man who was hanged twice• Frederick Deeming - the Rainhill psychopath who wiped out his own family and danced on their grave with his next victim• The bizarre link between a South Seas cult and the housewife who was stabbed fourteen times in her Knotty Ash home by a killer who struck under the cover of a fog• The unsolved case of the superintendent and his son who died of gunshot wounds under mysterious circumstances - in a police station• The enigmatic murder of Julia Wallace - and a very credible solution• The only assassination of a British prime minister - by a Liverpool businessman Plus many more fascinating murder cases.This fascinating book is a must for all readers of true crime in general and Liverpudlians and Merseysiders in particular.

    The freedom theme is explored in the words of well-known historical figures and ordinary Americans. Each document is accompanied by an introductory headnote and study questions.

    More men died in the Crimean War than in the American Civil War which followed soon after, but while the Civil War has been the subject of countless books, articles, and movies, the Crimean War has been virtually ignored.Part of the reason for this is that the causes of the Crimean War are not well understood. Just what made four empires go to war in the Black Sea in 1854? The outcome of the war was also partly responsible; it can be argued that the Crimean War changed nothing and that it is not at all clear why and for what half a million men died. Even the name by which this war is now known was not used at the time; until the twentieth century, this war was known in Britain as the Russian War.Yet the Crimean War is important for a number of reasons. Although it did not change the map of Europe and did not directly cause the fall of any of the combatants, it did indirectly shape the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century in Europe. This war also introduced newspaper reporters and photographers who provided regular dispatches direct from the battlefield, something that became a feature of virtually every war which followed. The presence of these reporters gave the public some idea, almost for the first time, of what war was really like for the men who fought it.Although the Crimean War did not fundamentally change the world, nothing would be quite the same after its conclusion. This is the story of the Crimean War.Discover a plethora of topics such asThe March to WarThe Charge of the Light BrigadeDeath, Disease, and the Lady with the LampInkerman and the Death of the TsarThe Naval WarThe Fall of SevastopolAnd much more!

    In The Death of Trotsky, Cecelia Holland brings this fated and fatal day to life, from its quotidian beginnings to its dramatic close. Between Trotsky’s waking and his final rest, she probes the outer-workings and inner thoughts of those who were with him till the end, illuminating a man who exited life as he lived it: defiantly. Cecelia Holland, author of more than 30 books and articles, lives in northern California with her family.Cover Design by Adil Dara.

    In this troubling expose of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block of "The Wall Street Journal" show that the flaws go much deeper than out-of-touch federal bureaucrats or overwhelmed local politicians.Drawing on exclusive interviews with federal, state, and local officials, Cooper and Block take readers inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during Hurricane Katrina--the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, the individuals who saw that the system was broken but were unable to fix it. America's top emergency response officials had long known that a calamitous hurricane was likely to hit New Orleans, but that seems to have had little effect on planning or execution. "Disaster" demonstrates that the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain. Washington is ill equipped to handle large-scale emergencies, be they floods or fires, natural events or terrorist attacks, and Cooper and Block make a strong case for overhauling of the nation's emergency response system. This is a book that no American can afford to ignore."

    Vast in scope, exhaustive in original research, written with passion, narrative skill, and human sympathy, A People's Tragedy is a profound account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation. Many consider the Russian Revolution to be the most significant event of the twentieth century. Distinguished scholar Orlando Figes presents a panorama of Russian society on the eve of that revolution, and then narrates the story of how these social forces were violently erased. Within the broad stokes of war and revolution are miniature histories of individuals, in which Figes follows the main players' fortunes as they saw their hopes die and their world crash into ruins. Unlike previous accounts that trace the origins of the revolution to overreaching political forces and ideals, Figes argues that the failure of democracy in 1917 was deeply rooted in Russian culture and social history and that what had started as a people's revolution contained the seeds of its degeneration into violence and dictatorship. A People's Tragedy is a masterful and original synthesis by a mature scholar, presented in a compelling and accessibly human narrative.

    Provinces are in rebellion, while Emperor Nero struggles to maintain the remnants of his political power, as well as his last shreds of sanity. In the province of Hispania, the governor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, marches on Rome. In his despair, Nero commits suicide. Galba, the first Emperor of Rome from outside the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, is at first viewed as a liberator, yet he soon proves to be a merciless despot, alienating even those closest to him. A member of the imperial court, and former favorite of Nero, Marcus Salvius Otho seeks to become the childless Galba’s successor. When he is snubbed for another of the new emperor’s favorites, Otho decides to take the mantle of Caesar by force. At the same time, the governor of Germania, Aulus Vitellius, is proclaimed emperor by his legions, leading Rome into civil war. In the east, the empire’s fiercest general, Flavius Vespasian, has been embroiled in suppressing the rebellion in Judea over the last two years. With nearly one third of the entire Roman Army under his command, he wields formidable power. At first attempting to stay above the fray, and with the empire fracturing into various alliances, Rome’s most loyal soldier may soon be compelled to put an end to the Reign of the Tyrants.

     You surely have heard something about the Korean War. Or the Forgotten War as some call it. But do you really know all that happened? Have you heard the personal stories from the people who actually saw or did the fighting? If you haven't, you are in for a treat. While the war was among the shortest in history, it left an invisible mark - a divided Korea. And there's a lot that led to that. It wasn't just about the UN and South Korea fighting against North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union. You will: * Learn what UN soldiers did with Chinese corpses when it got cold. * Understand Japan's role in facilitating the war. * Know the real reason China got into the war despite being very scared of America. * Know why America got stung by underequipped and underskilled Chinese fighters * Learn why Truman was saved from impeachment for firing MacAurthor. * Know why America backed an undemocratic South Korean president There is a lot more you will learn in this book. Just click the download button to start reading.

    

     In the years before the First World War, Filson Young had become friends with several notable Royal Navy leaders, including Lord Fisher and Admiral Beatty. Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Young began to miss his friends and resolved to join them and share in their experiences. Even though volunteer officers were ridiculed, Young wrote to his friends and managed to engineer a Lieutenant’s gazette in the R.N.V.R. Buoyed by the success of the Scarborough raid, Admiral Hipper of the Imperial German Navy sought a repeat of the exercise, this time against the fishing fleet on the Dogger Bank. Young was there to witness it. First published in 1921, With the Battle Cruisers is a very personal, focused study of naval life during wartime as it unfolded for Young. Filson Young (1876-1938) was an Irish writer, journalist, war correspondent and essayist. He was noted for publishing a book about the sinking of the Titanic little over a month after the tragedy in 1912. Between November 1914 and May 1915 he served as a Lieutenant R.N.V.R.; With the Battle Cruisers was one of two books he wrote about his naval service.

    At the time few details of his crimes were made known. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy and rumours later circulated that his actions had endangered British agents, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed. To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet, as Roger Hermiston reveals in this thrilling new biography, his story touches not only the depths of treachery, but also the heights of heroism. In WWII the teenage Blake performed sterling deeds for the Dutch resistance, before making a dramatic bid for freedom across Nazi-occupied Europe. Later recruited by British Intelligence, he quickly earned an exemplary reputation and was entrusted with building up the Service's networks behind the Iron Curtain. And, following a posting to Seoul, he also suffered for his adopted country, when captured by North Korean soldiers at the height of their brutal war with the South. By the time of his release in 1953, Blake was a hero, one of the Service's brightest and best officers. But unbeknownst to SIS they were harbouring a mole. Week after week, year after year, Blake was assiduously gathering all the important documents he could lay his hands on and passing them to the KGB. Drawing on hitherto unpublished records from his trial, new revelations about his dramatic jailbreak from Wormwood Scrubs, and original interviews with former spies, friends and the man himself, 'The Greatest Traitor' sheds new light on this most complex of characters and presents a fascinating shadow history of the Cold War.

    Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.From BooklistIf there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today. Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections.

    

    This book provides an account of the life of LTTE chief Prabhakaran, who led an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state to create Eelam, a separate nation for the Sri Lankan Tamils.The book begins from Prabhakaran’s childhood days in the aftermath of India’s and Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain. The Sri Lankan Tamils were following Gandhi’s non-violent methods to fight for their rights as citizens of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran, an ardent fan of Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose, felt that non-violence would not work against a Sinhala dominated government and began experimenting with violent acts against the Government to send a message. His initial success became the nucleus for the formation of LTTE, which became the quintessential guerrilla organization fighting the State.The book details various incidents of Prabhakaran’s life including terror attacks, assassination of politicians, heads of States and militant leaders; India’s role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict; Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka; the Eelam wars, negotiations, betrayals and elections; through to his killing in May 2009.