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The true stories behind some of the most shocking assassinations in recent history. We live in a new age of political assassination; within our lifetimes all the senior members of the UN Security Council have used it as an extension of political policy in all corners of the globe. In every case, the orders came from the very top. Today, while leading governments use covert ops, drones and lazer guided missiles, the terrorist methods of car bombs and suicide bombers make the game even more dangerous. In his compelling history of hit men, assassinations and the men who command them, Richard Bellfield recalls the major hits in history from Julius Caesar to twenty of the most shocking assassinations in recent history. He also reveals: how the assassination of President Sadat of Egypt launched Al Qaeda. How President Kennedy ordered the death of President Diem of Vietnam. And with excerpts from CIA and Al Qaeda manuals he shows how they have changed the course of history. He also uncovers the hidden world of killers and cover ups.
Exploding telephones, pipe-guns and bullets made of teeth, aspirin explosives, cobra-venom darts, a rifle that shoots around corners, a 'piss bomb' (10 cups of boiled urine mixed with nitric acid), exploding clams, samurai swords, karate chops, poisoned umbrellas and a fuel-laden light aircraft. Sometimes even a regular gun. These are just some of the methods that have been used over the last fifty years to speed 4,000 VIPs to a premature end. How to Kill is not an encyclopaedia of assassination but rather a gripping history that charts the development of the modern world through the eyes of the assassins that tried to change it. It is also a work of investigation, surprising conspiracies and remarkable connections are uncovered throughout. This book is the first to study in detail not only the causes and surprising consequences of assassination, but also the crucial seconds of the act itself and the psychology of the assassin in an effort to understand why some assassinations succeed where others fail - and what might be done to prevent them. It is also the first book to examine the fascinating facts and figures of assassination, revealing everything from the success rate by type of weapon and the escape and survival rates of assassins to the most popular time of year and location for assassination. The definitive book on assassination, How to Kill shows that sometimes, one murder can change the world.
Representing a unique reference tool for readers interested in history, criminology, or terrorism, this book provides the most complete and up-to-date coverage of assassinations of key figures throughout history and around the world. Effecting the death of a political figure, a leader of a nation, or a public figure usually captures people's attention. But how often is assassination effective to achieve the larger objective beyond the death of the targeted individual? Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia offers more than 200 entries on assassinations of all kinds that will allow readers to grasp the often-complex motivating factors behind each event and better understand historical and contemporary social unrest. Each entry identifies the assassination target and summarizes that person's significance; discusses the person's assassination, including the factors that led up to it and its political and cultural contexts; and explains the powerful effects of the assassination in world history. The encyclopedia also includes various sidebars that spotlight relevant individuals, groups, and movements and present intriguing factoids such as the final disposition of notorious assassins' weapons and various films and novels that were inspired by famous assassinations. In addition, 23 primary source documents provide accounts of assassinations throughout world history.
Western civilization began in the Middle East: Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam, were born there. For over a millennium, the Islamic empires were ahead of the West in learning, technology and medicine, and were militarily far more powerful. It took another three hundred centuries for the West to catch up, and overtake, the Middle East. Why does it seem different now? Why does Osama bin Laden see 1918, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as the year everything changed? These issues are explained in historical detail here, in a way that deliberately seeks to go behind the rhetoric to the roots of present conflicts. A Brief History of the Middle East is essential reading for an intelligent reader wanting to understand what one of the world's key regions is all about. Fully updated with a new section on the Iraq Invasion of 2003, the question of Iran and the full context of the Isreali/Palestine conflict.
Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.
A brilliant true crime account of the assassinations that altered the course of Irish history from the “compulsively readable” writer (The Guardian). One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially made surgeon’s blades. They put an end to the new spirit of goodwill that had been burgeoning between British Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland’s leader Charles Stewart Parnell as the men forged a secret pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland—with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone’s protégé, to play an instrumental role in helping to do so. In a story that spans Donegal, Dublin, London, Paris, New York, Cannes, and Cape Town, Julie Kavanagh thrillingly traces the crucial events that came before and after the murders. From the adulterous affair that caused Parnell’s downfall; to Queen Victoria’s prurient obsession with the assassinations; to the investigation spearheaded by Superintendent John Mallon, also known as the “Irish Sherlock Holmes,” culminating in the eventual betrayal and clandestine escape of leading Invincible James Carey and his murder on the high seas, The Irish Assassins brings us intimately into this fascinating story that shaped Irish politics and engulfed an Empire. Praise for Julie Kavanagh’s Nureyev: The Life “Easily the best biography of the year.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “The definitive biography of ballet’s greatest star whose ego was as supersized as his talent.” —Tina Brown, award-winning journalist and author
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first definitive history of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the IDF’s targeted killing programs, hailed by The New York Times as “an exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject.” WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN HISTORY NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY JENNIFER SZALAI, THE NEW YORK TIMES NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist • The New York Times Book Review • BBC History Magazine • Mother Jones • Kirkus Reviews The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions. Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism). Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the entire world. “A remarkable feat of fearless and responsible reporting . . . important, timely, and informative.”—John le Carré
The No 1 Bestseller! 'A triumph' Nicola Tallant, Sunday World Crime World podcast 'An incredible catalogue of mayhem ... amazing' Pat Kenny, Newstalk 'Riveting' Irish Times Meet the Wilsons - the deadliest family in crime Brothers Eric, Keith and John Wilson, their cousin Alan, and nephew Luke shared a trade - assassination. Working for Ireland's criminal gangs they brought bloodshed and chaos to the streets. The Wilsons were not choosy about their targets. Hutches, Real IRA chiefs or random opponents from pub rows - they were all the same to them. Nor were they picky about motives - as long as the price was right, they asked no questions. The Hitmen is the shocking story of how a family cornered the market in intimidation and vengeance. It details the terrible cost in human suffering, particularly the death of an innocent teenage girl, Mariaora Rostas, when she randomly crossed their path. And it reveals how, one by one, each of the Wilsons was put out of business. The Hitmen draws on exclusive access to wire taps, case files and interviews with sources close to the gang who have never spoken before. No 1 bestselling authors Stephen Breen and Owen Conlon have written an extraordinary account of a family business like no other.
The abuse of power, genocide, the destruction of total war, unimaginable cruelty and the suffering of millions were all central features of Hitler's Nazi regime. Yet the Nazis were also highly successful in manipulating images and information: they mobilized and engaged vast numbers of people, caught the imagination of the young and appeared remarkably modern to many contemporary observers. Was the Third Reich a throwback to a mythical past or a brutally modern and technologically advanced state? Was Hitler a strong dictator who achieved his clear goals, or was his chaotic style of government symptomatic of a weak dictator, unable to control the complex and contradictory forces that he had unleashed? Was the Third Reich ruled by terror, or largely supported by a compliant German population? Was the genocide against the Jews a peculiarly German phenomenon, or a uniquely German expression of a terrible wider trend? Whittock explores these and other key questions, interrogating the views of different historians and drawing on a wealth of primary sources - from state-sponsored art to diaries, letters and memoirs of both perpetrators and victims - to provide an overview of the complex evidence. History should aim to put us firmly in touch with the lives of people living in the past and the issues they faced. Whittock never loses sight of the individuals whose lives were caught up in these extraordinary events, while also giving a lucid overview of the bigger picture.
Hitmen for Hire takes the reader on a journey like no other, navigating a world of paid hitmen, informers, rogue policemen, criminal taxi bosses, gang leaders, and crooked politicians and businessmen. Criminologist Mark Shaw examines a society in which contract killings have become commonplace, looking at who arranges hits, where to find a hitman, and even what it is like to operate as a hitman – or woman. Since 1994, South Africa has seen a worrying increase in the commercialisation of murder – and has been rocked by several high-profile contract killings. Drawing on his research of over a thousand incidents of hired assassinations, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders are used to exert a mafia-type control over the country's legal and illegal economic activity. Contracted assassinations, and the organised criminal activity behind them, contain sinister linkages with the upperworld, most visibly in relation to disputes over tenders and access to government resources. State security actors increasingly mediate relations between the under and upper worlds, with serious implications for the long-term success of the post-apartheid democratic project.