From the bestselling author of Bloodline of the Holy Grail comes an explosive historical detective story. Essential reading for all fans of Dan Brown's novels, Gardner presents secret archives on the true identity of Mary Magdalene, the hidden lineage of Jesus and Mary, and the 2,000-year-old conspiracy that forms the basis of Christianity itself. Laurence Gardner's impeccable research takes us on an exciting detective trail to piece together the true, controversial significance of the Magdalene. / Mary Magdalene is described in the New Testament as Jesus' close companion and a woman that he loved. And yet, the Church teaches that she was a prostitute who, at some stage, became repentant. Why the discrepancy between scripture and dogma? / Why does Mary appeal so romantically to artists, who have painted her throughout the centuries as something much more significant than the Church traditionally portrays? / What is the secret of Mary Magdalene and how much do we really know about her relationship with Jesus? Were they married? Did they have children, and if so, who makes up the messianic lineage? The book includes exclusive insights into: -- the Da Vinci connection: The real meaning behind Leonardo da Vinci's paintings and why the Renaissance Church censored portrayals of the Magdalene - the sacred marriage of Jesus and Mary - the truth about the enigmatic Templar society called The Priory of Sion and the underground stream that protected the sacred heritage of the messianic descendants - the truth behind the Knights Templar -- who they were and what their role was - the hidden gospel of the Magdalene, excluded from the New Testament canon - Mary Magdalene -- goddess or prostitute? Her life and exile in France - the forbidden tomb: the secret resting place of Mary Magdalene.

" Detecting Forgery reveals the complete arsenal of forensic techniques used to detect forged handwriting and alterations in documents and to identify the authorship of disputed writings. Joe Nickell looks at famous cases such as Clifford Irving's ""autobiography"" of Howard Hughes and the Mormon papers of document dealer Mark Hoffman, as well as cases involving works of art. Detecting Forgery is a fascinating introduction to the growing field of forensic document examination and forgery detection.

When President McKinley was murdered at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901, Americans were bereaved and frightened. Rumor ran rampant: A wild-eyed foreign anarchist with an unpronounceable name had killed the Commander-in-Chief. Eric Rauchway's brilliant "Murdering McKinley" re-creates Leon Czolgosz's hastily conducted trial and then traverses America as Dr. Vernon Briggs, a Boston alienist, sets out to discover why Czolgosz rose up to kill his President. While uncovering the answer that eluded Briggs and setting the historical record straight about Czolgosz, Rauchway also provides the finest portrait yet of Theodore Roosevelt at the moment of his sudden ascension to the White House.
For Czolgosz was neither a foreigner nor much of an anarchist. Born in Detroit, he was an American-made assassin of such inchoate political beliefs that Emma Goldman dismissed him as a police informant. Indeed, Brigg's search for answers---in the records of the Auburn New York State penitentiary where Czolgosz was electrocuted, in Cleveland where Leon's remaining family lived---only increased the mystery. Roosevelt, however, cared most for the meanings he could fix to this "crime against free government all over the world." For Roosevelt was every inch the calculating politician, his supposed boyish impulsiveness more feint than fact. At one moment encouraging the belief that Czolgosz's was a political crime, at the next that it was a deranged one, Roosevelt used the specter of McKinley's death to usher in Progressive Era America.
So why did Czolgosz do it? Only Rauchway's careful sifting of long-ignored evidence provides an answer: heart-broken, recently radicalized, and thinking he had only months to live, Leon decided to take the most powerful man in America with him.

Following on the heels of his national bestseller A Treasury of Royal Scandals, Michael Farquhar turns his attention to matters a little closer to home with A Treasury of Great American Scandals. From the unhappy family relationships of prominent Americans to the feuds, smear campaigns, duels, and infamous sex scandals that have punctuated our history, we see our founding fathers and other American heroes in the course of their all-too-human events. Ineffectual presidents, lazy generals, traitors; treacherous fathers, nagging mothers, ungrateful children, embarrassing siblings; and stories about insanity, death, and disturbing postmortems are all here, as are disagreeable marriages, vile habits, and, of course, sex: good sex, bad sex, and good-bad sex too. We can take comfort in the fact that we are no worse and no better than our forebears. But we do have better media coverage. Bonus educational material:

• A brief history of the United States, including scandals!
• The American Hall of Shame!
• A complete listing of presidential administrations!

This is the story of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories in British politics, an intrigue that still has resonance almost a century later: the Zinoviev Letter of 1924. Almost certainly a forgery, no original has ever been traced, and even if genuine it was probably Soviet 'fake news'. Despite this, the Letter still haunts British politics nearly a century after it was written; it was the subject of major Whitehall investigations in the 1960s and 1990s, and cropped up in the media as recently as during the Referendum campaign and the 2017 general election. The Letter, encouraging the British proletariat to greater revolutionary fervour, was apparently sent by Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Bolshevik propaganda organization, to the British Communist Party in September 1924. Sent to London through British Secret Intelligence Service channels, it arrived during the general election campaign and was leaked to the press. The Letter's publication by the Daily Mail on 25 October 1924 just before the General Election humiliated the first ever British Labour government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, when its political opponents used it to create a 'Red Scare' in the media. Labour blamed the Letter for its defeat, insisting there had been a right-wing Establishment conspiracy, and many in the Labour Party have never forgotten it. The Zinoviev Letter has long been a symbol of political dirty tricks and what we would now call 'fake news'. But it is also a gripping historical detective story of spies and secrets, fraud and forgery, international subversion and the nascent global conflict between communism and capitalism.

In the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, the story of David Koresh, the FBI and the tragedy at Waco - a book for everyone fascinated by true crime, conspiracy theory, and American extremity. The assault by federal agents on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, in which 86 people died, has become a founding myth of the extreme wing of American conservatism, invoked by militiamen, gun rights advocates and the alt-right. The leader of the evangelical sect at Waco, an extreme form of Seventh-Day Adventism, was Vernon Howell, a charismatic chancer and former victim of sexual abuse who called himself David Koresh. He himself became a sexual predator on a large scale, exploiting many of the women in his compound. He was also a compelling preacher and interpreter of the Bible, notably the Book of Revelation, and was obsessed with the coming of the Apocalypse. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms duly obliged, with tragic results. Koresh is Stephan Talty's extraordinary, meticulous narration of this event, in all its squalor, strangeness and delirium. Talty doesn't downplay the madness of the cult, but he is humanely sympathetic to Koresh and his followers and is also highly critical of the ATF and FBI, who were spoiling for a violent showdown, and explains why the siege has become so important to those who loathe the state.

Since earliest times, human beings have pondered the incomprehensible questions of the universe, life . . . and the afterlife. Where did mortal man go to join the immortal Gods? Was the immense and complex structure at Giza an Egyptian Pharaoh's portal to immortality? Or a pulsating beacon built by extraterrestrials for landing on Earth?

In this second volume of his trailblazing series "The Earth Chronicles," Zecharia Sitchin unveils secrets of the pyramids and hidden clues from ancient times to reveal a grand forgery on which established Egyptology is founded, and takes the reader to the Spaceport and Landing Place of the Anunnaki gods--"Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came."

As humans, we embrace our individuality, yet we chase the comfort and sense of purpose that comes from being part of a group. Especially timely given our polarized world, Chasing We-ness examines how social media, AI, new leadership styles, and other modern developments affect our state of we-ness. It illuminates how our contemporary identities find expression in both progressive and conservative social movements that foster a sense of we-ness. Embracing the reality that "we're all in this together," the book interrogates our efforts to achieve a state of we-ness that rejects hate, social injustice, and autocratic agendas in the twenty-first century. This book explores why, how, and with what effect we build we-ness into our lives in both healthy and destructive ways. William Marsiglio draws on his expertise as a leading sociologist to explore the motivational forces that inspire a sense of group belonging in intimate groups, civic organizations, thought communities, sports and leisure activities, and work. Promoting initiatives that cultivate mindfulness, empathy, altruism, and leadership, Chasing We-ness proposes essential life skills to empower us, reduce social divisions, strengthen the social fabric, and uplift our spirits as global citizens.

The first full-scale sociological survey of the assimilation of minorities in America, this classic work presents significant conclusions about the problems of prejudice and discrimination in America and offers positive suggestions for the achievement of a healthy balance among societal, subgroup, and individual needs.

Pursues the residue of the Montauk Project leading to the discovery of a quantum relic. This relic opens the door to understanding the greatest mysteries of history and heralds a new time period once prophesied by native elders as the Second Coming of the Pharoahs. The artifacts of history point to a Blue Race which founded the Egyptian culture and honored the feminine principle through the star Sirius. THe descendants of these people are the Tuareg, or Blue People, who reside in one of the most mysterious and intriguing strongholds left on Earth: the Ahaggar Mountains in southern Algeria. Ancient artifacts and doctrines reveal the occult biology of the Virgin Birth and many more remarkable discoveries.

Princess Diana, Jackie O, Grace Kelly& mdash;the star icon is the most talked about yet least understood persona. The object of adoration, fantasy, and cult obsession, the star icon is a celebrity, yet she is also something more: a dazzling figure at the center of a media pantomime that is at once voyeuristic and zealously guarded. With skill and humor, Daniel Herwitz pokes at the gears of the celebrity-making machine, recruiting a philosopher's interest in the media, an eye for society, and a love of popular culture to divine our yearning for these iconic figures and the role they play in our lives.

Herwitz portrays the star icon as caught between transcendence and trauma. An effervescent being living on a distant, exalted planet, the star icon is also a melodramatic heroine desperate to escape her life and the ever-watchful eye of the media. The public buoys her up and then eagerly watches her fall, her collapse providing a satisfying conclusion to a story sensationally told& mdash;while leaving the public yearning for a rebirth.

Herwitz locates this double life in the opposing tensions of film, television, religion, and consumer culture, offering fresh perspectives on these subjects while ingeniously mapping society's creation (and destruction) of these special aesthetic stars. Herwitz has a soft spot for popular culture yet remains deeply skeptical of public illusion. He worries that the media distances us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons. It also blinds us to the shaping of our political present.

THE EMERGING NEW WORLD ORDER A depraved satanic cult called the Illuminati is waging a covert war against humanity. This is the key to understanding mankind's tragic history and current predicament. For more than a thousand years, Cabalist money lenders have conspired to usurp power from church and aristocracy, according to a plan detailed in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." This plan does not represent Jews, but only a small cabal of bankers who organized in Masonic secret societies. They intermarried with prominent Gentiles and formed a vast occult and criminal underground. They are stealthily constructing a totalitarian world government. Taking God's place, secularism is a transition step to their Satanism. They involve nations in needless wars and enthrall the masses with porn, violence, trivia and toys. They attack our sources of identity and love - God (religion); family (gender); country and race - in order to stymie and dehumanize us. Sounds incredible, but after reading some of these 90 short essays, you'll nod in agreement. Their goal is to control your mind. If you know the truth, they can't.

American society has changed dramatically since A Culture of Conspiracy was first published in 2001. In this revised and expanded edition, Michael Barkun delves deeper into America's conspiracy sub-culture, exploring the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, the "birther" controversy surrounding Barack Obama's American citizenship, and how the conspiracy landscape has changed with the rise of the Internet and other new media. What do UFO believers, Christian millennialists, and right-wing conspiracy theorists have in common? According to Michael Barkun in this fascinating yet disturbing book, quite a lot. It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date. Barkun discusses a range of material-involving inner-earth caves, government black helicopters, alien abductions, secret New World Order cabals, and much more-that few realize exists in our culture. Looking closely at the manifestations of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material from religious and political literature, to New Age and UFO publications, to popular culture phenomena such as The X-Files, and to websites, radio programs, and more, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millenarian activity. His book underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is now spreading into more mainstream segments of American culture.

#1 Best Seller in Trivia & Fun Facts, Questions & Answers, Curiosities & Wonders, and Cults & Demonism Think You Know About Sexual Customs Around Our World? Have Fun and Enjoy Some Surprises!This book is a humorous glimpse of a wide range of stereotype-busting sexual, relationship and romantic mores around the world. It is fun, interesting, and eye-opening! For example, places where women control the mating game, set marriage rules, and marry one another for political power. The fact that it's all true also makes it fascinating. Take a romp through a rollicking worldwide tour with LOL views of extraordinary sexual customs. It will astound and regale you. At the same time, it proves sex is like happiness - universally sought but subjectively enjoyed.

Why do serial killers gravitate towards certain kinds of occupation? Jobs with minimum oversight or ties, the opportunity to leave the radar and that bring them into proximity with potential victims and whilst hiding in plain sight. Why also do they target certain types of victim?Through his wide knowledge of the topic honed at one of Britain's leading centres for criminological studies, Adam Lynes demonstrates how theory, practice, profiling and behaviour intertwine to identify the kind of people we should fear (and especially if we fall within certain categories of vulnerable people). The book also looks at those personality-types most likely to become serial killers.From the text: "It is apparent that driving as a form of occupational choice is a "popular" form of employment for British serial murderers. In an effort to determine why this may be, [the] case studies of eight British serial murderers [in the book] demonstrate just how such an occupation can impact upon these offenders' criminal behaviour ...These findings may prove to be of benefit to scholars of serial murder, and to those who attempt to apprehend them." From Britain's serial killing centre of excellence.Looks in depth at eight of Britain's serial killer drivers, dealing with some of the most notorious crimes of modern times. A fresh and uniquely interesting perspective. Demonstrates the links between mobility, transience, recognisance, predatory behaviour and acting out murderous fantasy. Will be used for a range of courses on the subject.