In The Assassination of the Archduke, Greg King and Sue Woolmans offer readers a vivid account of the lives - and cruel deaths - of Franz Ferdinand and his beloved Sophie. Combining royal biography, romance, and political assassination, the story unfolds against a backdrop of glittering privilege and an Imperial Court consumed with hatred, taking readers from Bohemian castles to the horrors of Nazi concentration camps in a compelling, fascinating human drama. As moving as the fabled romance of Nicholas and Alexandra, as dramatic as Mayerling, Sarajevo resonates with love and loss, triumph and tragedy in a vibrant and powerful narrative. It lays bare the lethal circumstances surrounding that fateful Sunday morning in 1914, examining not only the Serbian conspiracy that killed Franz and Sophie and sparked the First World War but also insinuations about the hidden powers in Vienna that may well have sent them to their deaths. With a Foreword from the Archduke's great-granddaughter, Princess Sophie von Hohenberg, and drawing on a wide variety of unpublished sources and with unique access to previously restricted Hungarian and Czech archives, including Sophie's diaries and family papers, King and Woolmans have written the most comprehensive account of this momentous event available in English. In doing so, they offer readers an intriguing and startlingly revisionist look at this most famous of Archdukes, his family, and their momentous collision with destiny in 1914.

"Probing deep into four hidden histories... the material released should dispel any notions of 'lone nuts' or coincidence... These articles cut a clear path through the thick jungle of disinformation that has grown around these events and expose the truly hideous teratomas that thrive and bloom under the canopy of 'national security.'"--"New York Press"

The contributors to this volume reveal the many inconsistencies and unsupported conclusions in the Warren Commission report on the assassination of JFK. From the unbelievable "coincidences" such as the assassination occurring at the part of the motorcade route changed at the last minute, to discrepancies in medical reports and the mysterious dismantling and rebuilding of the presidential limousine, the essays bring new information to light. The contributors also look at the event in a broader context, analyzing government "fact-finding" and propaganda as well as the media's reluctance to report new findings.

Targeted killings represent both the contemporary weapon of choice and, clearly, the weapon of the future. From the perspective of the nation-state, the benefits of targeted killing are clear: aggressive measures against identified targets can be carried out with minimal, if any, risk to soldiers. But while the threat to soldiers is minimal, there are other risks that must be considered. Particularly, there is a high possibility of collateral damage as well as legitimate concerns regarding how a target is defined. Clearly broad legal, moral, and operational issues are at stake when considering targeted killing. In Legitimate Target, A Criteria Based Approach to Targeted Killing, Amos Guiora proposes that targeted killing decisions must reflect consideration of four distinct elements: law, policy, morality, and operational details, thus ensuring that it complies with principles of domestic and international laws. The author, writing from both personal experience and an academic perspective, offers important criticism and insight into the policy as presently implemented, highlighting the need for a criteria based decision making process in defining and identifying a legitimate target. Legitimate Target, A Criteria-Based Approach to Targeted Killing blends concrete examples with a nuanced study of the current targeted killing paradigm with an emphasis on the dilemmas of morality and the law.

Stefano Dall'Aglio sheds new light on the notorious Florentine Lorenzino de' Medici (also known as Lorenzaccio) and on two of the most infamous assassinations of Italian Renaissance history. In 1537 Lorenzino changed the course of history by murdering Alessandro de' Medici, first duke of Florence, and paving the way for the accession of the new duke, Cosimo I. In 1548 Lorenzino was killed in Venice in revenge for the assassination he had committed. Basing his work on extensive research in the historical archives of Florence and Simancas, Dall'Aglio reconstructs the events surrounding these murders and involving the Medici, their loyalists, the Florentine republican exiles, and some of the most powerful sovereigns of the time. The first publication in a century, and the first work in English, to examine the life of Lorenzino de' Medici, this fascinating revisionist history is as gripping as a detective novel, as Dall'Aglio unravels a 500-year-old mystery, revealing that behind the bloody death of the duke's assassin there was the Emperor Charles V.

In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains--and enigmas--in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald--his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an "America waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat." Based on KGB and FBI transcripts, government reports, letters and diaries, and Mailer's own international research, this is an epic account of a man whose cunning, duplicity, and self-invention were both at home in and at odds with the country he forever altered.
Praise for "Oswald's Tale"
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"America's largest mystery has found its greatest interpreter."--"The Washington Post Book World"
"Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."--Robert Stone, "The New York Review of Books"
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"A narrative of tremendous energy and panache; the author at the top of his form."--Christopher Hitchens, "Financial Times"
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"The performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."--Martin Amis, "The Sunday Times "(London)
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Praise for Norman Mailer
" Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation."--"The New York Times"
"A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent."--"The New Yorker"
"Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure."--"The Washington Post"
"A devastatingly alive and original creative mind."--"Life"
"Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance."--"The New York Review of Books"
"The largest mind and imagination in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book."--"Chicago Tribune"
"Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream."--"The Cincinnati Post"

Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. As he carefully weighs the evidence concerning the murder of Caesar, Parenti sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about wider Roman society. In these pages we find reflections on the democratic struggle waged by Roman commoners, religious augury as an instrument of social control, the patriarchal oppression of women, and the political use of homophobic attacks. The Assassination of Julius Caesar offers a whole new perspective on an era we thought we knew well.

Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn't killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald's killer); Ruby's attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.
Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions: Why, shortly after his brother's death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, "I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me"? Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby's attorney? How does Belli's Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby's first-degree murder conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy's relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president's death warrant?
For fifty years, Shaw maintains, researchers investigating the president's murder in Dallas have been looking at the wrong motives and actors. "The Poison Patriarch "offers a shocking reassessment--one that is sure to alter the course of future assassination debates.

These were the crimes that were meant to change the world, and sometimes did. The book connects the killing of the Kennedys or the murder that sparked the First World War with less well-known stories, such as the Berlin shooting of an instigator of the Armenian genocide or the attack on an American 'robber baron'. Taking in Malcolm X and Queen Victoria, Adolf Hitler and Andy Warhol, Charles Manson and Emma Goldman, Tsars, Presidents, and pop stars, Age of Assassins traces the process that turned thought into action and murder into an icon. In tackling the history of political violence, the book is unique in its range and attention to detail, summoning up an age of assassination that is far from over.

"When Harlem Nearly Killed King" spins the tale of a little-known episode in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. how, in 1958, King was stabbed by a deranged black woman in Harlem, and then saved by Harlem Hospital's most acclaimed African-American surgeon, using a little known and difficult procedure.
Pearson recreates America at the dawn of the civil rights movement, and in so doing probes and examines the living body politic of the nation, black and white, and shows us how change really occurs: painfully, not in one grand gesture, but in a thousand small and contradictory ways.
As the story of "When Harlem Nearly Killed King" unfolds, it offers up surprising truths: how Harlem's leading black bookseller was snubbed by King and his entourage in favor of a Jewish-owned department store; and how the acclaimed surgeon seems not to have been the doctor responsible for the surgery. As truths and apocrypha clash in these pages, what emerges is a powerful picture of change in race perspectives in America, and how such change really occurs -- reminding us today that race in America is still unfinished business.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

The death of JFK, Jr., - accident or assassination? Exploding the Truth: The JFK, Jr. Assassination presents evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate the only surviving son of President John F. Kennedy and considers the motives that many powerful forces had, to make sure he never set foot in the White House. Divided into two parts, Part One examines the potential motives the Bush family, the C.I.A., and perhaps even Israeli intelligence, had to eliminate JFK, Jr. Part Two systematically dismantles the official version of events, that JFK, Jr., crashed his plane due to pilot error, and examines both the evidence of a government cover-up at the crime scene, and the extensive eyewitness reports of an explosion that brought the aircraft down.

A stunning compilation of research into War Department files, pretrial and trial testimony (the actual words), newspaper accounts and manuscript collections.

Powerful Cabinet members, popular generals, forceful politicians and others: This book probes the background and character of everyone involved.

John Wilkes Booth's brash personality emerges as his life unfolds in this unique account - from his childhood as the son of one of America's foremost actors, to his own career as a theatrical star, to the development, implementation and aftermath of his plot against Lincoln. By 1865, at the age of 26, Booth had much to lose: a loving family, hosts of friends, adoring women, professional success, and the promise of yet more fame and fortune. Yet he risked everything to orchestrate a daring conspiracy to abduct Lincoln, take him south and barter him for Confederate prisoners of war. The Civil War effectively ended before Booth could carry out his plan, so he assassinated the president, believing him to be a tyrant who had turned the once-proud Union into an engine of oppression that had devastated the South. Through a combination of lively narrative and detailed daily logs, this book gives a day-by-day account of Wilkes' complex life - from his birth May 10, 1838, to his death April 26, 1865 - and offers a new understanding of the crime that shocked a nation.

For nearly 150 years, one question remains unanswered in the events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln: was Samuel A. Mudd, the physician who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, guilty or innocent of participating in the conspiracy to murder the president? Featuring a new introduction and epilogue, this well-researched and unbiased account of Mudd's testimony, trial, and imprisonment remains the gold standard on the topic more than forty years after it was first published. So, did Dr. Mudd merely answer the call of duty when an injured man appeared on his doorstep, or was he a wily co-conspirator who avoided the death penalty? Hal Higdon takes an objective stance and allows the reader to decide.

The Warren Commission's major conclusion was that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "lone assassin" of President John F. Kennedy. Gerald McKnight rebuts that view in a meticulous and devastating dissection of the Commission's work.

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy was officially established by Executive Order to investigate and determine the facts surrounding JFK's murder. The Warren Commission, as it became known, produced 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, more than 17,000 pages of testimony, and a 912-page report. Surely a definitive effort. Not at all, McKnight argues. The Warren Report itself, he contends, was little more than the capstone to a deceptive and shoddily improvised exercise in public relations designed to "prove" that Oswald had acted alone.

McKnight argues that the Commission's own documents and collected testimony--as well as thousands of other items it never saw, refused to see, or actively suppressed--reveal two conspiracies: the still very murky one surrounding the assassination itself and the official one that covered it up. The cover-up actually began, he reveals, within days of Kennedy's death, when President Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach all agreed that any official investigation must reach only one conclusion: Oswald was the assassin.

While McKnight does not uncover any "smoking gun" that identifies the real conspirators, he nevertheless provides the strongest case yet that the Commission was wrong--and knew it. Oswald might have knowingly or unwittingly been involved, but the Commission's own evidence proves he could not have acted alone.

Based on more than a quarter-million pages of government documents and, for the first time ever, the 50,000 file cards in the Dallas FBI's "Special Index," McKnight's book must now be the starting point for future debate on the assassination.

Among the revelations in "Breach of Trust: "

Both CIA and FBI photo analysis of the Zapruder film concluded that the first shot could not have been fired from the sixth floor.

The Commission's evidence was never able to place Oswald at the "sniper's nest" on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting.

JFK's official death certificate, signed by his own White House physician and contradicting the Commission's account of Kennedy's wounds, was left out of the official record.

The dissenting views of the naval doctors who performed the autopsy and those of the government's best ballistic experts were kept out of the official report.

The Commission's tortuous "Single Bullet" or "Magic Bullet" theory is finally and convincingly dismantled.

Oswald was probably a low-level asset of the FBI or CIA or both.

Commission members Gerald Ford (for the FBI) and Allen Dulles (for the CIA) acted as informers regarding the Commission's proceedings.

The strong dissenting views of Commission member Senator Richard Russell (D-Georgia) were suppressed for years.

In March 1964 the Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans (1925-2004) encountered Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, at JFK International Airport. In April 1977, he found himself testifying before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). In the thirteen years between these two events, Oltmans conducted his own investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy-an undertaking that would bring him into contact with a host of individuals with prominent roles in the case, most notably George de Mohrenschildt (1911-1977), whose involvement with Oswald and whose own untimely death remain mysteries to this day. Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination is Oltmans's account of his investigation, published here for the first time in English. Combining personal memoir and factual reporting, the book chronicles the journalist's interviews with figures such as Jim Garrison and Cyril Wecht, his long and complicated friendship with de Mohrenschildt and his wife, and his own whirlwind experience in the media spotlight. Most saliently, Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination offers an intimate look at Oltmans's collaboration with de Mohrenschildt on the book that would later become Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him, and at the circumstances surrounding de Mohrenschildt's death and his possible implication in Oswald's actions. Systematically annotated and fact-checked, with an insightful introduction from editor Michael Rinella and a wealth of rare photographs and letters, this book provides a fascinating portrait of one of the twentieth century's most controversial journalists even as it completes a critical chapter in the investigation of the Kennedy assassination.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is a central drama of the American experience. Its impact is felt to this day, and the basic story is known to all. Anthony Pitch's thrilling account of the Lincoln conspiracy and its aftermath transcends the mere facts of that awful night during which dashing actor John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head and would-be assassin Lewis Payne butchered Secretary of State William Seward in the bed of his own home. "They Have Killed Papa Dead!" transports the reader to one of the most breathtaking moments in history, and reveals much about the stories, passions, and times of those who shaped this great tragedy. Virtually every word of Anthony Pitch's account is based on primary source material: quotes from previously unpublished documents, diaries, letters, and journals. With an unwavering fidelity to historical accuracy, Pitch provides confirmation of threats against the president-elect's life as he traveled to Washington by train for his first inauguration, and a vivid personal account of John Wilkes Booth being physically restrained from approaching Lincoln at his second inauguration. Perhaps most chillingly, details come to light about conditions in the special prison where the civilian conspirators accused of participating in the Lincoln assassination endured tortuous conditions in extreme isolation and deprivation, hooded and shackled, before and even during their military trial. Pitch masterfully synthesizes the findings of his prodigious research into a tight, gripping narrative that adds important insights to our national story.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Edgar Award Nominee
One of the Best Books of the Year: "O, The Oprah Magazine," "Time," "The Washington Post," "The Christian Science Monitor," " St. Louis Post-Dispatch," "San Francisco Chronicle
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With a New Afterword

On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King's assassin that would lead them across two continents. With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws on a wealth of dramatic unpublished documents, Hampton Sides, bestselling author of "Ghost Soldiers, " delivers a non-fiction thriller in the tradition of William Manchester's "The Death of a President" and Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood. "With "Hellhound On His Trail, "Sides shines a light on the largest manhunt in American history and brings it to life for all to see.

On June 5th, 1968, at L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel, Robert F. Kennedy celebrated his victory in the California Democratic primary with a rousing victory speech anticipating a successful run for the presidency. Moments later, gunshots shattered that dream. The police quickly apprehended Sirhan Sirhan, who the world believed had single-handedly masterminded the shooting. But in Who Killed Bobby? Shane O'Sullivan makes a stunning case that will fundamentally alter the way the public views Bobby Kennedy's death. After an autopsy, LA County Coroner Thomas Noguchi concluded that the deadly shots had been fired from an inch behind Kennedy's right ear, but not a single witness placed Sirhan this close; most placed his gun several feet away, and in front of the senator. Moreover, Vincent Di Pierro, along with several other witnesses, saw Sirhan with a girl in a polka-dot dress in the pantry, exclaiming, "We shot him. We shot him." O'Sullivan presents new interviews with key witnesses the LAPD browbeat into changing their stories. He also presents a damning case against Sirhan's psychological state. Sirhan repeatedly scrawled "RFK Must Die" in his notebook and recreated the same kind of automatic writing when later hypnotized by his defense team. O'Sullivan cites psychiatric evidence that Sirhan was an extremely susceptible hypnotic subject, whose behavior on the night of the shooting fit the profile of a programmed assassin. Was Sirhan programmed to be a decoy for the real killer?

A thorough work of contemporary history and a distillation of the complex web of the Iranian Kurdish political world, this biography of Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou depicts the character and passionate action of one of the twentieth century's most exceptional and democratic leaders of a national movement. Carol Prunhuber, who knew Ghassemlou from the early 1980s, shows us the many facets of a humanist leader of magnitude and worldwide scope. From revolution that toppled the Shah to the dark and treacherous alleys of the Cold War, Dreaming Kurdistan revives the Kurdish leader's fated path to assassination in Vienna. We know how, why, and who murdered Ghassemlou-and we stand witness to Austria's raison d'etat, the business interests that put a lid on the investigation, and the response of silent indifference from the international community. Professor of economics in Prague, bon vivant in Paris, clandestine freedom fighter in the Kurdish mountains, stalked by the Shah's secret police, Ghassemlou is ultimately assassinated by the hit men of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic. Prunhuber takes us, through a murky world of equivocal liaisons, complicities, treachery, and undisguised threats, from Tehran to Vienna. While the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to perturb and defy the West, Dreaming Kurdistan is essential for an understanding of Iran and the Kurds' longing for freedom and democracy.

Working with thousands of previously unreleased documents and drawing on more than one thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time, Joan Mellen revisits the investigation of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only public official to have indicted, in 1969, a suspect in President John F. Kennedy's murder.Garrison began by exposing the contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unstable pro-Castro Marxist who acted alone in killing Kennedy. "A Farewell to Justice" reveals that Oswald, no Marxist, was in fact working with both the FBI and the CIA, as well as with U.S. Customs, and that the attempts to sabotage Garrison's investigation reached the highest levels of the U.S. government. Garrison interviewed various individuals involved in the assassination, ranging from Clay Shaw and CIA contract employee David Ferrie to a Marine cohort of Oswald named Kerry Thornley, who at the very least was a Defense Intelligence Agency asset. Garrison's suspects included CIA-sponsored soldiers of fortune enlisted in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, an anti-Castro Cuban asset, and a young runner for the conspirators, interviewed here for the first time by the author.Building upon Garrison's effort, Mellen uncovers decisive new evidence and clearly establishes the intelligence agencies' roles in both a president's assassination and its cover-up, set in motion well before the actual events of November 22, 1963.

The people of America were not satisfied that Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential inquiry into the murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 had revealed the truth. This inspired a 'people's investigation', the nature and the scale of which were unequalled. It was the beginning of a quest to establish the truth which has so far taken 50 years and which still goes on. Who Killed Kennedy? is an exhaustive account of that quest, through the eyes of a historian who has been involved in it from the very beginning. It is a story of treachery, lies, deceit and murder. As the investigation has progressed over the years, the revelations have been breathtaking, the facts staggering and the real story so dramatic that fiction simply cannot equal it.

A riveting historical narrative of the heart-stopping events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the first work of history from mega-bestselling author Bill O'Reilly

The anchor of "The O'Reilly Factor" recounts one of the most dramatic stories in American history--how one gunshot changed the country forever. In the spring of 1865, the bloody saga of America's Civil War finally comes to an end after a series of increasingly harrowing battles. President Abraham Lincoln's generous terms for Robert E. Lee's surrender are devised to fulfill Lincoln's dream of healing a divided nation, with the former Confederates allowed to reintegrate into American society. But one man and his band of murderous accomplices, perhaps reaching into the highest ranks of the U.S. government, are not appeased.

In the midst of the patriotic celebrations in Washington D.C., John Wilkes Booth--charismatic ladies' man and impenitent racist--murders Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. A furious manhunt ensues and Booth immediately becomes the country's most wanted fugitive. Lafayette C. Baker, a smart but shifty New York detective and former Union spy, unravels the string of clues leading to Booth, while federal forces track his accomplices. The thrilling chase ends in a fiery shootout and a series of court-ordered executions--including that of the first woman ever executed by the U.S. government, Mary Surratt. Featuring some of history's most remarkable figures, vivid detail, and page-turning action, "Killing Lincoln" is history that reads like a thriller.