Some devised methods of torture cruel beyond belief, some Killed members of their own families, others ordered the murders of millions of innocents; some were admired statesmen, some were maniacs - others simply butchers. Vlad Dracul, prince of Wallachia, impaled his enemies on a forest of bloody stakes; the Byzantine empress Irene had her son's eyes gouged out; the Crusaders massacred 70,000 innocent Muslims and Jews when they took Jerusalem; the Mongol warlord Tamerlane built pyramids of human skulls. In the 20th century, Adolf Hitler slaughtered 6 million Jews, Josef Stalin liquidated 25 million Russians, while Mao Zedong was responsible for the deaths of 70 million Chinese. In 101World Heroes Simon Sebag Montefiore selected his ultimate heroes and heroines; here he reveals history's dark side .Monsters presents, in chronological order, compellingly readable portraits of 101 sinister individuals who shared a relish for the brutal exercise of pitiless, unbounded power, a delight in imposing pain and suffering, and a contempt for human life. Many of them - Nero and Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Henry VIII, Lucrezia Borgia and Jack the Ripper, Lenin and Himmler, Charles Manson and Pablo Escobar - are notorious. Others - Byzantine emperor Justinian the Slit-Nose, Pope John XII (who turned the Vatican into a brothel), the 16thcentury Scots cannibal Sawney Beane, Baron Ungern-Sternberg (who conquered Mongolia in 1920 believing he was Genghis Khan reborn), vampiric Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, Barbarossa the Ottoman pirate-king - are less familiar. Each biography is accompanied by an article revealing fascinating aspects of those monsters: Sultan Selim the Grim divulges the secret Ottoman methods of royal murder; 'Bloody' Mary evokes the heretic's death at the stake; we travel with Leopold II of Belgium into the 'Heart of Darkness' that was the Belgian Congo; Malawian dictator Dr Banda unveils the strange phenomenon of medical doctors who became murderous tyrants; and Papa Doc of Haiti reveals the nature of Voodoo. Lavishly illustrated, interspersed with illuminating quotations, both accessible and informative, Monsters is a Who'sWho of the cruel and murderous, the rapacious and depraved, and a gripping compendium of stories, characters and indispensable lessons from history that no one should forget - and everyone should know.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, born in 1965, educated at Harrow School and Caius College, Cambridge University, specializes in the history of the MIddle East and Russia. His acclaimed books are world bestsellers, published in over 35 languages. Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize, British Book Awards. Young Stalin won LA Times Book Prize for Biography (USA), the Costa Biography Award (UK), the Kreisky Prize for Political Literature (Austria) and Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France): Young Stalin is now being developed into a six-hour miniseries. He is the author of the novel, Sashenka. His latest book, Jerusalem: the Biography, a fresh history of the Middle East, is out now. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Visiting Professor at Buckingham University, he lives in London. He is the presenter of a new BBC series, Jerusalem: the Making of a Holy City. He is now writing his next project, The Romanovs, and a sequel to his novel, Sashenka. Readers can contact the author on Facebook and for more information, see:
www. simonsebagmontefiore.com
