Few events have been the subject of more conspiracy theories than the assassinations of the two Kennedy brothers. Indeed, a great many people consider that there were other individuals than Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan involved in both murders. Was a shot fired from Dealey Plaza's grassy knoll? Why did Jack Ruby shoot Oswald? Was it the CIA, the Soviets, Cuban nationalists or the Mafia that arranged John Kennedy's assassination? Was Robert Kennedy shot from in front and behind, and who had the most to gain from his death? These are just a few of the questions that have been put forward by a myriad of conspiracy theorists and it is those people and their ideas that Mel Ayton has tackled head-on. Over many years, Mel Ayton has examined all the more substantial conspiracy theories and, through careful analysis of documents and eyewitness statements, he has demolished each one. In each case, Mel Ayton presented the results of his detailed investigations in periodicals as he worked through the various theories. These have now been brought together to provide a comprehensive analysis of all the main theories as to who, how and why the two Kennedy brothers met their deaths in such unusual circumstances. Though wild ideas will continue to be proposed and efforts will still be made to demonstrate that Oswald could not have fired off three shots with great accuracy in the few seconds available to him as the presidential cavalcade passed beneath the window where he crouched, or that there were sinister reasons why three CIA men were allegedly present on the night of Robert Kennedy's assassination, the harsh reality is that the Kennedy brothers were each killed by lone gunmen. This is an absorbing read, brought up to date with the addition of new material as it has been uncovered. Maybe, just maybe, this book will persuade people that the official accounts of both murders, although flawed, are not cover-ups but simply statements of fact.

If you were beginning to believe that "lone nut" Lee Harvey Oswald did kill President Kennedy all by himself, this could be the book to convince you, that there was indeed a conspiracy and a cover-up. The contributors worked independently at first, and were drawn together by a shared outrage at statements on the assassination made in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" in 1992. They explain their evidence and reasoning in easily understandable language, and present insights on the physical evidence, the autopsy findings, the bullet trajectories, the interpretation of numerous eye-witness accounts, and the misleading logic of the official lone nut theorists. Among their conclusions are: crucial autopsy x-rays of JFK's skull have been fabricated; the official "magic bullet" theory is anatomically and ballistically impossible; autopsy pictures of the brain alleged to be JFK's are of someone else's brain; Kennedy was hit at least four times, and a minimum of six bullets were fired in Dealey Plaza that day; and new evidence indicates the Warren Commission inquiry was a political charade based on selected and manufactured evidence.

This updated paperback edition of the acclaimed analysis of medical and political events surrounding the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan includes a new Postscript on the election of 1992 and "the public's right to know " which covers the health problems and disclosures of Bush, Tsongas, Buchanan, Perot, and Clinton in light of the issues of privacy and confidentiality.

On November 22nd, 1963 the assassination of President John F. Kennedy set into motion a series of events that irrevocably changed American politics and culture. The media frenzy spawned by the controversy surrounding the death of JFK has since given way to a powerful public memory that continues to shape the way we understand politics, the 1960s, and the nation.

In The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Political Trauma and American Memory, Alice George traces the events of Kennedy s assassination and Lyndon B. Johnson s subsequent ascension to the presidency. Covering both the political shifts of the time and the cultural fallout of the national tragedy, this book introduces students of the twenty-first century to both an iconic event and to the context in which that event was heralded as iconic. Drawing on newspaper articles, political speeches, letters, and diaries, George critically re-examines the event of JFK s death and its persistent political and cultural legacy.

On November 22nd, 1963 the assassination of President John F. Kennedy set into motion a series of events that irrevocably changed American politics and culture. The media frenzy spawned by the controversy surrounding the death of JFK has since given way to a powerful public memory that continues to shape the way we understand politics, the 1960s, and the nation.

In The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Political Trauma and American Memory, Alice George traces the events of Kennedy s assassination and Lyndon B. Johnson s subsequent ascension to the presidency. Covering both the political shifts of the time and the cultural fallout of the national tragedy, this book introduces students of the twenty-first century to both an iconic event and to the context in which that event was heralded as iconic. Drawing on newspaper articles, political speeches, letters, and diaries, George critically re-examines the event of JFK s death and its persistent political and cultural legacy.

Leading the reader through a series of amazing coincidences and details, this book presents startling evidence that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was never captured but escaped to live for decades, continue his acting career, marry, and have children. Compelling and revealing information in the form of papers and diaries has recently been found in private collections-materials that provide greater insight into the events leading up to the assassination of Lincoln as well as details of the pursuit and capture of the man the government claimed was Booth.

Since 1789, when George Washington became the first president of the United States, forty-three men have held the nation's highest office. Four were killed by assassins, and serious attempts were made on the lives of eight others.Add to that list Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and it is reasonable to conclude that political prominence in the U.S. entails grave risks. In Defining Danger, James W. Clarke explores the cultural and psychological linkages that define assassinations and a new era of domestic terrorism in America.

Clarke notes an upsurge in political violence beginning with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Since then, there have been ten assassination attempts on nationally prominent political leaders. That is two more than the eight recorded in the previous 174 years of the nation's presidential history. New elements of domestic terror in American life were introduced in the 1990s by Timothy McVeigh, the "Oklahoma City Bomber," Ted Kaczynski, the "Unabomber," and Eric Rudolph, the abortion clinic bomber. These men were politically motivated; their crimes were unprecedented. These events and the perpetrators behind them are among the subjects of this book.

Defining Danger conveys two central themes. The first is that individual acts of violence directed toward America's democratically elected leaders represent a defining element of American politics. The second addresses how danger is defined, through an analysis of the motives and characteristics of twenty-one perpetrators responsible for these acts of political violence where shots were fired, or bombs detonated, and in most instances, victims died. The book is written in an accessible and engaging style that will appeal to the informed general reader, as well as to professionals in a variety of fields--especially in the wake of recent events and the specter of future violence that, sadly, haunts us all.

Assassination as a political act has a long history, predating the murder of Julius Caesar and continuing into our own time. The murder of the mighty has long fascinated artists and rebels but only rarely has it been studied in a scholarly manner. In Assassin, J. Bowyer Bell combines existing historical evidence with years of personal interviews with terrorists in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The result is an incisive study of that enigmatic figure, the revolutionary killer.

As Bell makes clear, the motives of the actors, and effectiveness of assassination, vary widely across time and place. Assassination in many parts of the world has not only been a normal political act, rational, explicable, but also often effective, in some cases taking fewer lives in the transfer of power than an election. Likewise, there have been all kinds of assassins--personal, psychopathic, professional, ranging from lonely failures trying to make their mark to authorized agents of the state.

Using the assassination of Henry IV of France as a historical backdrop, Bell writes about contemporary political murder from the perspective of one who has studied the subject of political violence for decades. Bell has met with or known well the perpetrators, conspirators, and intended victims of assassination who have escaped. His interviewees include a radical Irish revolutionary leader, an American Arabist diplomat, a spokesman for the PLO, and the president of a Mozambique liberation movement. The itinerary of his investigative journeys covers most of the flashpoints of contemporary political violence.

The people and places studied here at firsthand are engaged in a deadly game. The attrition rate is often high, the power fleeting, and the consequences often unforeseen. If past is prologue, assassination is to be with us for years to come. The volume will be essential reading for those engaged in the prevention of political violence and terror as well as historians and political scientists.

'A gripping history' Mary Beard 'A political thriller, and a human story that astonishes' Hilary Mantel 'Atmospheric and gripping, and [his] scholarship is impeccable' Greg Woolf Many men killed Julius Caesar. Only one man was determined to kill the killers. THE LAST ASSASSIN dazzlingly charts an epic turn of history through the eyes of an unheralded man. It is a hunt that an emperor wanted to hide, of torture and terror, politics and poetry, of ideas and their consequences, a gripping story of fear, revenge and survival.

The questions have haunted our nation for half a century: Was the President killed by a single gunman? Was Lee Harvey Oswald part of a conspiracy? Did the Warren Commission discover the whole truth of what happened on November 22, 1963? Philip Shenon, a veteran investigative journalist who spent most of his career at The New York Times, finally provides many of the answers. Though A CRUEL AND SHOCKING ACT began as Shenon's attempt to write the first insider's history of the Warren Commission, it quickly became something much larger and more important when he discovered startling information that was withheld from the Warren Commission by the CIA, FBI and others in power in Washington. Shenon shows how the commission's ten-month investigation was doomed to fail because the man leading it - Chief Justice Earl Warren - was more committed to protecting the Kennedy family than getting to the full truth about what happened on that tragic day. A taut, page-turning narrative, Shenon's book features some of the most compelling figures of the twentieth century-Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Chief Justice Warren, CIA spymasters Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, as well as the CIA's treacherous 'molehunter,' James Jesus Angleton. Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to the surviving commission staffers and many other key players, Philip Shenon's authoritative, scrupulously researched book will forever change the way we think about the Kennedy assassination and about the deeply flawed investigation that followed.

The murder of the Prime Minister, Butrus Ghali in 1910 was the first incident of its kind in Egypt for over a century, and it reflected the mood of Egypt's youth at the time. It also set a precedent for the more extreme elements of the population who saw assassination as a way to dispatch 'traitors' and as a potent expression of political dissent. Badrawi studies the circumstances that led to the violence and attempts to understand the mood and motives that provoked it.

On 20 June 1900, Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, was assassinated in a Peking street. By 4pm the first shots were fired into the legation quarter and the siege of foreigners by Boxers and imperial troops had begun. Among the besieged were 148 women from America, Europe, Russia and Japan and Maud, the Baron's American widow. What were their experiences? How did they cope with their 79 children for two months, without enough to eat, often under fire? This book tells their story - of courage, grief, humour, friendship, ill-health, and hard work - mostly through their own accounts. It identifies the women for the first time as individuals: missionary teachers and doctors, "globe trotters", and the wives of diplomats, officials, railway engineers, merchants, bankers and the owner of the Peking Hotel.

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.

Kanno Suga and Kaneko Fumika were both found guilty on different occasions in 1911 and 1926 of conspiring to assassinate the Japanese emperor. Kanno was executed and Kaneko hanged herself whilst in prison, but both women maintained their defiance of the State even in the face of death. Through examination of their own life stories and writings, Helene Bowen Raddeker brings to life the women's own interpretations of their lives and their attitudes to death, with the associations of political martyrdom, heroism and notions of immortality. She finds that their self-presentations became weapons in an ideological war of words about social and political realities and their deaths were a means of self-empowerment within their historical context.

On the evening of 14 April 1865 when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theatre, an entire audience was witness to the tragedy. From diaries, letters, depositions, affidavits, and periodicals, here is a collection of accounts from a variety of theatergoers--who by chance saw one of the truly pivotal events in U.S. history. Providing minute first-hand details recorded over a span of ninety years, " We Saw Lincoln Shot" explores an event that will forever be the subject of debate and controversy. "I was present at the theater and saw it all," said Samuel Koontz. "In fact I was only about fifteen feet from the President when he was shot, although he was in a private box in the theater." In a letter to his parent Jason S. Knox wrote: "Dear Father, It is with sad feeling that I take up my pen and address you. Last Friday night at ten o'clock, I witnessed the saddest tragedy ever enacted in this country. Notwithstanding my promise to you not to visit the theater, I could not resist the temptation to see General Grant and the President, and when the curtain at Ford's rose on the play of 'Our American Cousin, ' my roommate and I were seated on the second row of orchestra seats, just beneath the President's box." Although there have been many studies of the Lincoln assassination, few have been devoted to the actual event. Overwhelmingly, historians have been attracted to the conspiracy that preceded Lincoln's death or to the aftermath. Too few have relied sufficiently upon eyewitness accounts, and some, without considering how the human mind fails to preserve minute details in long-term memory, have trusted recollections transcribed many years after Lincoln died. With a sharp focus upon the circumstances reported by one hundred actual witnesses, "We Saw Lincoln Shot" provides vivid documentation of a momentous evening and exposes errors that have been perpetuated as the assassination has been rendered into written histories.

Bestselling author, James Earl Ray's defense attorney, and, later, lawyer for the King family William Pepper reveals who actually killed MLK. William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original bestselling and critically acclaimed book Orders to Kill, with twenty-six years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy-a government-sanctioned assassination of our nation's greatest leader. The plan, according to Pepper, was for a team of United States Army Special Forces snipers to kill King, but just as they were taking aim, a backup civilian assassin pulled the trigger. The table of contents include: Chapter 1: The Road to Memphis Chapter 2: Deathly Support Chapter 3: The Patsy Ritual Chapter 4: Questions Abound Chapter 5: The Prison Interview Chapter 6: The Deepening Plot Chapter 7: Showtime-Investigative Hearings Chapter 8: The Unscripted Television Trial Chapter 9: Doors Begin to Open Chapter 10: Roots of the Civil Trial Chapter 11: Discovery Chapter 12: A Darker, Deeper Scene Emerges Chapter 13: A Patsy's Death Chapter 14: A Key Player Begins to Talk Chapter 15: The Civil Trial Chapter 16: Raul Coelho ("Raul") Chapter 17: The Verdict and the Media Silence Chapter 18: A Courageous Witness Comes Forward Chapter 19: The Meeting Chapter 20: More Flesh on the Bones Chapter 21: The Ultimate Assassin In The Plot to Kill King, Pepper shares the evidence and testimonies that prove that Ray was a fall guy chosen by those who viewed King as a dangerous revolutionary. His findings make the book one of the most important of our time-the uncensored story of the murder of an American hero that contains disturbing revelations about the obscure inner-workings of our government and how it continues, even today, to obscure the truth.

Throughout his political life, Adolf Hitler was the subject of numerous assassination plots, some of which were attempted, all of which failed. While a few of these have become well known, particularly the bomb explosions at the Burgerbr ukeller in Munich in 1939 and the Stauffenberg _Valkyrie_ attempt carried out at the Wolfsschanze on 20 July 1944, many others have received far less attention -until now. In this book, John Grehan has examined the known planned or proposed assassination attempts on Hitler, from Chicago to London and from Sweden to the Ukraine -some of which have not previously been presented to the general public by historians. All manner of methods were proposed by those willing to bring Hitler's life to a premature and sticky end and Hitler was well aware of the danger which lurked potentially around every corner of every road, railway track, every building and even every individual. As a result, an immense, multi-layered security apparatus surrounded the Fuhrer day and night. Despite this, and knowing the risks they faced, many people sought to kill the German leader, and some very nearly did. Yet Hitler survived, often by just a minute or a millimetre, to die ultimately of his own hand. These plots and conspiracies are detailed in this book, along with a unique collection of photographs of many of the proposed or actual assassination locations. All will be revealed in this fascinating compilation of the obscure, the fanciful and the carefully considered attempts to assassinate Hitler.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Orthodox Jew Yigal Amir, twenty years ago this November, remains the most consequential event in the country's recent history. Killing a King relates parallel stories over the two years leading up to the assassination, as Rabin plotted political deals he hoped would lead to peace and Amir plotted murder. Dan Ephron covered both the rally where Rabin was assassinated and the subsequent murder trial. This deeply researched narrative is based on a trove of documents from the era and interviews with the key players, including members of Amir's family. Only through the prism of the murder is it possible to understand Israel today, from the paralysis in peace-making to the relationship between Netanyahu and Obama.

In End of Days, James L. Swanson, the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, brings to life the minute-by-minute details of the JFK assassination-from the Kennedys' arrival in Texas through the shooting in Dealey Plaza and the shocking aftermath that continues to reverberate in our national consciousness fifty years later. The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, has been the subject of enduring debate, speculation, and numerous conspiracy theories, but Swanson's absorbing and complete account follows the event hour-by-hour, from the moment Lee Harvey Oswald conceived of the crime three days before its execution, to his own murder two days later at a Dallas Police precinct at the hands of Jack Ruby, a two-bit nightclub owner. Based on sweeping research never before collected so powerfully in a single volume, and illustrated with photographs, End of Days distills Kennedy's assassination into a pulse-pounding thriller that is sure to become the definitive popular account of this historic crime for years to come.

"There is a lack of quiet in Sylvia that craves for action.... She knows that she is special and that she possesses unusual and varied abilities." -- From the Mossad's psychological evaluation of Sylvia Rafael

When Moti Kfir, head of the Academy for Special Operations of the Mossad, first interviewed Sylvia Rafael in a coffee shop, he knew she would make a great combatant for Israel's intelligence agency. She was outgoing, resourceful, brilliant, and had a talent for bonding with others. When Kfir warned her that the mysterious job they'd met to discuss could be dangerous, she simply sat back comfortably in her chair and smiled.

Sylvia Rafael is the page-turning account of a young, dedicated agent as told by the man who trained her. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, authors Ram Oren and Moti Kfir tell the story of Rafael's rise to prominence within the Mossad and her intelligence work trying to locate Ali Hassan Salameh -- the leader of Palestine's Black September organization and the mastermind behind the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Her team's misidentification of their mark would eventually lead to her arrest and imprisonment for murder and espionage.

Now available in English for the first time, Sylvia Rafael offers new insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its history, and its human cost. It is a gripping, authentic spy story about a fearless defender of the Jewish people.

On December 27, 2007, a suicide bomber killed Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan. Brilliant and charismatic, the head of a political family as important to Pakistani history as the Gandhis in India or the Kennedys in the United States, Bhutto had recently returned from exile to challenge military dictator Pervez Musharraf in a democratic election. In the aftermath of the assassination, some blamed Musharraf; others blamed terrorists linked to the Pakistani security service, the ISI; still others pointed the finger at Bhutto s own spouse and entourage; and some speculated that it was a lone wolf attack. Though the individuals behind the conspiracy have never been found, in Getting Away with Murder Heraldo Munoz goes further than anyone else to unravel the mystery of Bhutto s death. Moreover, he explains the unexpected role America played in the tragic events, the byzantine relationship between Pakistan and the United States, and how Bhutto s assassination impacted world politics. In a country ruled more often by military dictators than by elected governments, Bhutto offered a secular, democratic hope. Arguably one of Pakistan s most iconic political figures, she became one of the world s few female heads of government. Her assassination tore the country apart, destabilizing the entire region. Leading the United Nations inquiry, Munoz delved into murky world of Pakistani politics and the infamous Bhutto family, awash in charisma and power, controversy and violence. His year-long investigation frames a story of betrayals, corruption, foreign influence, and unsolved political assassinations.

Munoz provides new insight into Bhutto s unprecedented rise and an unflinching, minute-by-minute narrative of the assassination itself. With impeccable research, Munoz also situates Bhutto in the decades-long history of U.S.-Pakistan relations and the emergence of global terrorism, pinpointing her death as the moment when those relations changed forever.

The result is a gripping narrative of Pakistan s turbulent political realities and the death of its leading politician."

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.

This compelling book provides a meticulously documented account of officially sanctioned cannibalism in the southwestern province of Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. Drawing on his unique access to local archives of the Chinese Communist Party and on extensive interviews with party officials, the victims' relatives, and the murderers themselves, Zheng Yi paints a disturbing picture of official compliance in the systematic killing and cannibalization of individuals in the name of political revolution and "class struggle."The treasure-trove of evidence Zheng Yi has unearthed offers unprecedented insights into the way the internecine, factional struggles of the Cultural Revolution reached a horrifying level of insanity and frenzy among the ethnic Zhuang people of Guangxi. Profoundly moving, acutely observed, and unflinchingly graphic, "Scarlet Memorial" is a shining example of a genre of investigative reporting that courageously and independently records obscure and officially censored historical events, revealing hidden dimensions of modern Chinese history and politics.