Dreadfully Deadly History

Dreadfully Deadly History PDF Author: Clive Gifford
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1780551274
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Dreadfully Deadly History looks at the most gruesome facts from the past.

Dreadfully Deadly History

Dreadfully Deadly History PDF Author: Clive Gifford
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1780551274
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Dreadfully Deadly History looks at the most gruesome facts from the past.

More Deadly Than War

More Deadly Than War PDF Author: Kenneth C. Davis
Publisher: Henry Holt Books For Young Readers
ISBN: 1250145120
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
From bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes a fascinating account of the Spanish influenza pandemic 100 years after it first swept the world in 1918. "Davis deftly juggles compelling storytelling, gruesome details, and historical context. More Deadly Than War reads like a terrifying dystopian novel--that happens to be true." --Steve Sheinkin, author of Bomb and Undefeated A Washington Post Best Children's Book of the Month With 2018 marking the 100th anniversary of the worst disease outbreak in modern history, the story of the Spanish flu is more relevant today than ever. This dramatic narrative, told through the stories and voices of the people caught in the deadly maelstrom, explores how this vast, global epidemic was intertwined with the horrors of World War I--and how it could happen again. Complete with photographs, period documents, modern research, and firsthand reports by medical professionals and survivors, this book provides captivating insight into a catastrophe that transformed America in the early twentieth century. Praise for More Deadly Than War A Junior Library Guild Selection "More Deadly Than War is a riveting story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918, packed with unforgettable examples of the power of a virus gone rogue. Kenneth C. Davis's book serves as an important history--and an important reminder that we could very well face such a threat again." --Deborah Blum, New York Times bestselling author of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. "With eye-popping details, Kenneth C. Davis tracks the deadly flu that shifted the powers in World War I and changed the course of world history. In an age of Ebola and Zika, this vivid account is a cautionary tale that will have you rushing to wash your hands for protection." --Karen Blumenthal, award-winning author of Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different * "Davis once again makes history accessible for students from the middle grades through high school." --VOYA, STARRED review

Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History

Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History PDF Author: Matthew White
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083306
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 727

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Book Description
“An amusing (really) account of the murderous ways of despots, slave traders, blundering royals, gladiators and assorted hordes.”—New York Times Evangelists of human progress meet their opposite in Matthew White’s epic examination of history’s one hundred most violent events, or, in White’s piquant phrasing, “the numbers that people want to argue about.” Reaching back to the Second Persian War in 480 BCE and moving chronologically through history, White surrounds hard facts (time and place) and succinct takeaways (who usually gets the blame?) with lively military, social, and political histories.

The Mosquito

The Mosquito PDF Author: Timothy C. Winegard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524743437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 639

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Book Description
**The instant New York Times bestseller.** *An international bestseller.* Finalist for the Lane Anderson Award Finalist for the RBC Taylor Award “Hugely impressive, a major work.”—NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito’s reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.

Deadly Beautiful

Deadly Beautiful PDF Author: Liana Joy Christensen
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
ISBN: 1927147980
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Did you know that the humble marmot is responsible for more than one billion human deaths? Or that it’s possible to be bitten by a snake’s head for up to an hour after it’s been decapitated? On the flip side, for every person bitten by a shark each year, 25 people are bitten by New Yorkers. It seems that truth sometimes is stranger than fiction!These facts and many more appear in this fascinating tribute to our world’s ‘deadly’ wildlife. At its heart, however, 'Deadly Beautiful' makes a passionate plea for us to learn to better cohabit with our fellow residents of planet Earth. Ever-increasing concern for the fate of the environment and the world’s endangered wildlife means that this book is a particularly timely addition to the world of natural history publishing. Dr Liana Joy Christensen, one of Australia’s foremost nature writers, takes a fresh and entertaining look at the ‘deadly’ animals with which humans have for so long enjoyed a love–hate relationship. These animals are generally not the aggressors nor the lethal killing machines that mythology and tradition would have us believe. Most also serve vital roles in maintaining the ecological balance of their habitats, while their fascinating behaviour and often striking beauty make them worthy of close study, particularly as so many of them are facing the worst death of all — extinction.Beautifully illustrated, 'Deadly Beautiful' is certain to foster a new understanding and appreciation of these incredible animals and their importance on a global scale.

A Lethal Obsession

A Lethal Obsession PDF Author: Robert S. Wistrich
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588368998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1200

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Book Description
In this unprecedented work two decades in the making, leading historian Robert S. Wistrich examines the long and ugly history of anti-Semitism, from the first recorded pogrom in 38 BCE to its shocking and widespread resurgence in the present day. As no other book has done before it, A Lethal Obsession reveals the causes behind this shameful and persistent form of hatred and offers a sobering look at how it may shake and reshape the world in years to come. Here are the fascinating and long-forgotten roots of the “Jewish difference”–the violence that greeted the Jewish Diaspora in first-century Alexandria. Wistrich suggests that the idea of a formless God who passed down a universal moral law to a chosen few deeply disconcerted the pagan world. The early leaders of Christianity increased their strength by painting these “superior” Jews as a cosmic and satanic evil, and by the time of the Crusades, murdering a “Christ killer” had become an act of conscience. Moving seamlessly through centuries of war and dissidence, A Lethal Obsession powerfully portrays the creation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the fateful anti-Semitic tract commissioned by Russia’s tsarist secret police at the end of the nineteenth century–and the prediction by Theodor Herzl, Austrian founder of political Zionism, of eventual disaster for the Jews in Europe. The twentieth century fulfilled this dark prophecy, with the horrifying ascent of Hitler’s Third Reich. Yet, as Wistrich disturbingly suggests, the end of World War II failed to neutralize the “Judeophobic virus”: Pogroms and prejudice continued in Soviet-controlled territories and in the Arab-Muslim world that would fan flames for new decades of distrust, malice, and violence. Here, in pointed and devastating detail, is our own world, one in which jihadi terrorists and the radical left blame Israel for all global ills. In his concluding chapters, Wistrich warns of a possible nuclear “Final Solution” at the hands of Iran, a land in which a formerly prosperous Jewish community has declined in both fortunes and freedoms. Dazzling in scope and erudition, A Lethal Obsession is a riveting masterwork of investigative nonfiction, the definitive work on this unsettling yet essential subject. It is destined to become an indispensable source for any student of world affairs.

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Seven Deadly Sins PDF Author: Richard Newhauser
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004157859
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
These essays examine the seven deadly sins as cultural constructions in the Middle Ages and beyond, focusing on the way concepts of the sins are used in medieval communities, the institution of the Church, and by secular artists and authors.

Stand Your Ground

Stand Your Ground PDF Author: Caroline Light
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807064661
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.

Deadly Embrace

Deadly Embrace PDF Author: Jackie Collins
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743424107
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
A story taking place on either side of Lethal Seduction finds celebrity magazine writer Madison Castelli digging into her mob hitman father's past in order to discover the truth about her mother's death and encountering a vortex of greed, lust, and deception that threatens her life. Reprint.

Deadly Censorship

Deadly Censorship PDF Author: James Lowell Underwood
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611173000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The definitive story of a South Carolina newspaper editor’s murder at the hands of a 1902 gubernatorial candidate, and the dramatic trial that ensued. On January 15, 1903, South Carolina lieutenant governor James H. Tillman shot and killed Narciso G. Gonzales, editor of South Carolina’s most powerful newspaper, the State. Blaming Gonzales’s stinging editorials for his loss of the 1902 gubernatorial race, Tillman shot Gonzales to avenge the defeat and redeem his “honor” and his reputation as a man who took bold, masculine action in the face of an insult. James Lowell Underwood investigates the epic murder trial of Tillman to test whether biting editorials were a legitimate exercise of freedom of the press or an abuse that justified killing when camouflaged as self-defense. This clash—between the revered values of respect for human life and freedom of expression on the one hand and deeply engrained ideas about honor on the other—took place amid legal maneuvering and political posturing worthy of a major motion picture. One of the most innovative elements of Deadly Censorship is Underwood’s examination of homicide as a deterrent to public censure. He asks the question, “Can a man get away with murdering a political opponent?” Deadly Censorship is courtroom drama and a true story. Underwood offers a painstaking re-creation of an act of violence in front of the State House, the subsequent trial, and Tillman’s acquittal, which sent shock waves across the United States. A specialist on constitutional law, Underwood has written the definitive examination of the court proceedings, the state’s complicated homicide laws, and the violent cult of personal honor that had undergirded South Carolina society since the colonial era. “Since the 1920s, the United States has had dozens of sensational trials—all of which have been labeled “the trial of the century.” There is no question had the trial of Lieutenant Governor James Tillman for the murder of N. G. Gonzales, the editor of the State newspaper, occurred in our time that it would have had the same appellation. . . . Riveting . . . as gripping as any contemporary courtroom drama.” —Walter Edgar, author of South Carolina: A History “An insightful and in-depth look at the assassination of Columbia newspaper editor N.G. Gonzales by South Carolina Lt. Gov. James H. Tillman in 1903. Jim Underwood’s carefully researched work not only reports on the killing and ensuing trial, it explains the forces that created a society where it was acceptable to kill a man to silence his pen.” —Jay Bender, Reid H. Montgomery Freedom of Information Chair, University of South Carolina “Finally, Jim Underwood has unraveled the killing, the murder trial, and the aftermath, and through his narrative tells a story of unfettered freedom of the press versus hot-bloodied Southern manhood honor. Without question, Deadly Censorship is a remarkable, eloquent, and important book.” —W. Lewis Burke, Director of Clinical Legal Studies, School of Law, University of South Carolina