Evil folks! (non-fiction)
Explore a chilling list of non-fiction books about evil figures in history. Uncover true stories of notorious criminals, dictators, and dark personalities in these gripping reads.
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The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich
by Callum Macdonald
"If anyone warranted assassination during World War II, the man to know was Reinhard Heydrich (19041942)chief of the security police, rabid anti-Semite, architect of the Final Solution, ruthless over""
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Pol Pot
by Philip Short
A portrait of the Cambodian despot whose rule saw the deaths of one-fifth of the country's population documents how Pol Pot's beliefs about moral purity, self-abnegation, and utopian prosperity degenerated into radical egalitarianism.
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Quisling
by Hans Fredrik Dahl
The word "Quisling" has been used as a synonym for "traitor" or "treachery." The original Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945) was a gifted Norwegian army officer who sided with the Nazis on the first day of Norway's entry into the Second World War. Dahl's biography is the first to use a complete range of source material from Nordic, German, Italian and Russian archives, and family archives now in the United States tracing Quisling's career through to the drama of his trial and execution for high treason in 1945.
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The Reign Of Napoleon Bonaparte
by Robert Asprey
Robert Asprey completes his definitive, two-volume biography with an intimate, fast-paced look at Napoleon's daring reign and tragic demise with more of the personality and passion that marked the first volume of this cradle to the grave biography. In The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, Asprey showed us that Napoleon was not the father of chaos, but rather an heir to it. In this companion volume, we see Napoleon struggling to subdue the turmoil. We peer over Napoleon's shoulder as he solidifies his growing empire through a series of marriages, military victories, and shrewd diplomatic manipulations. We watch Napoleon lose control of his empire, plot his return from Elba, rally peasants in his march to Paris, endure defeat at Waterloo and suffer exile and a lonely death on the island of St. Helena. Robert Asprey tells this fascinating, tragic tale in lush narrative detail.
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Portrait of a Killer
by Patricia Daniels Cornwell
Now updated with new material that brings the killer's picture into clearer focus. In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror. An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally butchering women in the slums of London's East End. Police seemed powerless to stop the killer, who delighted in taunting them and whose crimes were clearly escalating in violence from victim to victim. And then the Ripper's violent spree seemingly ended as abruptly as it had begun. He had struck out of nowhere and then vanished from the scene. Decades passed, then fifty years, then a hundred, and the Ripper's bloody sexual crimes became anemic and impotent fodder for puzzles, mystery weekends, crime conventions, and so-called "Ripper Walks" that end with pints of ale in the pubs of Whitechapel. But to number-one New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the Ripper murders are not cute little mysteries to be transformed into parlor games or movies but rather a series of terrible crimes that no one should get away with, even after death. Now Cornwell applies her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise to dig deeper into the Ripper case than any detective before her--and reveal the true identity of this fabled Victorian killer. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history. Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world's finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert. It has been said of Cornwell that no one depicts the human capability for evil better than she. Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britain's greatest painters but also a serial killer, a damaged diabolical man driven by megalomania and hate. She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press. Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims, and her examination of this man's birth defects, the consequent genital surgical interventions, and their effects on his upbringing present a casebook example of how a psychopathic killer is created. New information and startling revelations detailed in Portrait of a Killer include: - How a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA tests--on samples drawn by Cornwell's forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents--yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evid...
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Richard III and the Murder in the Tower
by Peter A. Hancock
This text presents an analysis of the events and circumstances which precipitated the execution of William, Lord Hastings at the Tower of London on Friday 13 June 1483.
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The Psychopathic God
by Robert Waite
The Psychopathic God is the definitive psychological portrait of Adolph Hitler. By documenting accounts of his behavior, beliefs, tastes, fears, and compulsions, Robert Waite sheds new light on this complex figure. But Waite's ultimate aim is to explain how Hitler's psychopathology changed German—and world—history. With The Psychopathic God we can begin to understand Hitler as never before.
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Stalin
by Edvard Radzinsky
From the author of The Last Tsar, the first full-scale life of Stalin to have what no previous biography has fully obtained: the facts. Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky paints a picture of the Soviet strongman as more calculating, ruthless, and blood-crazed than has ever been described or imagined. Stalin was a man for whom power was all, terror a useful weapon, and deceit a constant companion. As Radzinsky narrates the high drama of Stalin's epic quest for domination-first within the Communist Party, then over the Soviet Union and the world-he uncovers the startling truth about this most enigmatic of historical figures. Only now, in the post-Soviet era, can what was suppressed be told: Stalin's long-denied involvement with terrorism as a young revolutionary; the crucial importance of his misunderstood, behind-the-scenes role during the October Revolution; his often hostile relationship with Lenin; the details of his organization of terror, culminating in the infamous show trials of the 1930s; his secret dealings with Hitler, and how they backfired; and the horrifying plans he was making before his death to send the Soviet Union's Jews to concentration camps-tantamount to a potential second Holocaust. Radzinsky also takes an intimate look at Stalin's private life, marked by his turbulent relationship with his wife Nadezhda, and recreates the circumstances that led to her suicide. As he did in The Last Tsar, Radzinsky thrillingly brings the past to life. The Kremlin intrigues, the ceaseless round of double-dealing and back-stabbing, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class-all become, in Radzinsky's hands, as gripping and powerful as the great Russian sagas. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might--and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history--is solved.
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Ivan the Terrible
by Henri Troyat
Ivan IV, the first Grand Duke of Moscow to take the title Czar, was one of the most violent and demented rulers in history. Both sadist and mystic, he claimed to be both the blood successor to Caesar Augustus and GodÂżs vicar on earth. Devoted associates and sworn enemies alike perished amid hideous tortures. Villages, towns and an entire city were obliterated; he even murdered his own son in a burst of fury. And yet, by conquering much of the territory that became 20th century Russia, he also forged an orderly empire out of the barbarous and disordered world into which he was born. Henri Troyat, the Prix Goncourt Âżwinning biographer of Catherine the Great, Tolstoy, Turgenev and other giants of Russian history brings to life RussiaÂżs bloodiest czar creating the unforgettable portrait of a man driven mad with the delirium of his divine right to power.
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The Borden Tragedy
by Rick Geary
In graphic novel format, retells the story of Lizzie Borden who was accused of being an axe murderer.
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Bath Massacre
by Arnie Bernstein
"With the meticulous attention to detail of a historian and a storyteller's eye for human drama, Bernstein shines a beam of truth on a forgotten American tragedy. Heartbreaking and riveting." ---Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author of Starvation Heights "A chilling and historic character study of the unfathomable suffering that desperation and fury, once unleashed inside a twisted mind, can wreak on a small town. Contemporary mass murderers Timothy McVeigh, Columbine's Dylan Klebold, and Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho can each trace their horrific genealogy of terror to one man: Bath school bomber Andrew Kehoe." ---Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came to Good Hart On May 18, 1927, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school. Thirty-eight children and six adults were dead, among them Kehoe, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife---burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze---was found tied to a handcart, her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath Massacre serves as a reminder that terrorism and large-scale murder are nothing new.
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The Ashes of Waco
by Dick J. Reavis
This is the story the daily press didn't give us. It may be the definitive book about what happened at Mt. Carmel, near Waco, Texas, examined from both sides—the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI on one hand, and David Koresh and his followers on the other. Dick J. Reavis contends that the government had little reason to investigate Koresh and even less to raid the compound at Mt. Carmel. The government lied to the public about most of what happened—about who fired the first shots, about drug allegations, about child abuse. The FBI was duplicitous and negligent in gassing Mt. Carmel-and that alone could have started the fire that killed seventy-six people. Drawing on interviews with survivors of Koresh's movement (which dates back to 1935), as well as from esoteric religious tracts and audiotapes, and previously undisclosed government documents, Reavis uncovers the real story of the burning at Waco, including the trial that followed. The author quotes from Koresh himself to create an extraordinary portrait of a movement, an assault, and an avoidable tragedy.
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A Serial Killer
by Stephen Cender
This book of poetry is about the reality which goes on in our daily lives. Love and Hate, Life and Death, Truimph and Catastrophe, Dreams and Nightmares. Rape and Respect, Thoughts and Fantasies, Praises and Worship, Obstacles and Enrichment. Honors and Recognitions. In all of the trails and tribulations we most overcome with some humorous riddles.
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Wicked Beyond Belief
by Michael Bilton
Bilton presents a revelatory investigation into the police handling of the Yorkshire Ripper Case which spanned over 14 years. For the first time the detectives are talking and the victims are reliving the nightmare.
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Papa Doc & the Tontons Macoutes
by Bernard Diederich
Originally published in 1970, this is the story of Haiti under the rule of Dr. François Duvalier. Bernard Diederich lived in Haiti for 14 years and had personal experience of the early Duvalier days and the period of Maloire's rule. His work exposes the evil of Duvalier's rule and the tale of how Duvalier undid U.S. policy. "No one alive ... is better qualified than Bernard Diederich to tell the horrifying story of Haiti under the rule of Dr. François Duvalier," writes Graham Greene in the foreword to this edition. "What a story it is: tragic, terrifying, bizarre, even at times comic. Papa Doc sits in his bath wearing his top hat for meditating ... the head of his enemy Philogenes stands on his desk ... the hearse carrying another enemy's body is stolen by the Tonton Macoutes at the church door ... the writer Alexis is stoned to death ... This is a very full account of Duvalier's reign, which will be indispensable to future historians." -- Graham Greene (Foreword)
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Killer Clown
by Terry Sullivan
"Story of John Wayne Gacy, the depraved maniac who sodomized, tortured, and killed thirty-three young men and boys."--P [4] of cover.
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The Jeffrey Dahmer Story
by Don Davis
An account of the bizarre case of Jeffrey Dahmer--the son of middle-class parents whose ten-year murdering spree is possibly responsible for the deaths of more than sixteen people--describes Dahmer's background and the uncovering of his crimes.
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Osama Bin Laden
by Thomas R. Mockaitis
A biography of Osama bin Laden, covering his life in Saudi society throughout the 1960s and 1970s, religious conversion, role as a jihadist leader, and status in parts of the Muslim world, and examines the spread of radical Islam and the development, scope, and capabilities of al-Qaida.