The account of "The Black Death" here translated by Dr. Babington was Hecker's first important work of this kind. It was published in 1832, and was followed in the same year by his account of "The Dancing Mania." The books here given are the two that first gave Hecker a wide reputation. Many other such treatises followed, among them, in 1865, a treatise on the "Great Epidemics of the Middle Ages." Besides his "History of Medicine," which, in its second volume, reached into the fourteenth c...

Just as the Great Fire of London took place one year after the Great Plague broke out, in the 14th Century, Germany and Latvia were still burying their dead from the Black Death, or bubonic plague, when they were hit by a strange epidemic--often called Dancing Mania, St. John's Dance, or St. Vitus' Dance--that caused thousands of people to literally "dance" themselves to death. Due to the spasmodic jerkings and twitchings of the "dancers," it was thought at the time that the victims were p...

Charles I or Charlemagne united most of Western Europe during the Middle Ages and laid the foundations for modern France and Germany. He was the first recognized Roman emperor in the West since the collapse of the Roman Empire three centuries earlier and ruled absolutely over a vast domain for thirteen years.Einhard’s biography of the Carolingian Empire’s founder The Life of Charlemagne: Vita Karoli Magni is one of the most famous pieces of literature on the early Middle Ages. It i...

“Gaul is divided into three parts.”Originally composed for propaganda purposes, Julius Caesar’s war diary is one of the earliest examples of a military science manual, detailing arms technology, tactical maneuvers, battlefield politics, espionage, intelligence and even the role played by luck in ground and sea campaigns.Nine years of fighting is condensed into a tight treatise rendered in lavish, cinematic prose. Caesar’s superior forces crush one defiant Gallic, G...

The art of murder knows many forms, but few more harrowing than murder for reasons of ritual or the supernatural. Supposedly serving a higher cause, they are often little more than acts of self-gratifying blood-lust. Voodoo Killers chronicles the disturbing history of ritualistic killing around the world, with shocking examples of human sacrifice from past and present, voodoo hexes, sexual slavery and satanic murder. It is a history that incorporates vampires, serial killers and rapists as...

20 April 1999, Columbine High School, Colorado, USA. Lunchtime. Enter Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold armed with shotguns. Pumping bullets into two classmates they left one dead and the other fighting for his life. They went on the rampage through the school leaving in their wake a trail of bloody death and destruction. In the aftermath, fifteen were dead, including the killers, and twenty-four were seriously injured. Spree Killers examines the events surrounding the world’s most shocking ma...

The writer of this memoir, Aaron Starkman, was barely 20 years old, when he was driven in into the Nazi Hitler hell. He decided to keep a diary, where he made notes of everything that was happening. He did not know whether he would survive. When he was liberated, he gathered all the notes and deposited them with the Warsaw Jewish Historical Institute. Unfortunately, few of the survivors kept notes about the horrible events, that took place.When the history of the Holocaust will be ...

Throughout the course of history, freedom fighters have been many and varied as have the motivations and the successes of the revolutions they attempted and inspired. Whether their beliefs were correct or misplaced, the courage to fight for the cause has always been the common denominator. They stood alone frequently in the face of enormous adversity and attempted to change the face of the world around them. Freedom Fighters is a record of inspirational, courageous, determined, and sometim...

The black death is thought to have started in China, and travelled along the Silk Road to reach Crimea by 1346. From there, it was probably carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships, it spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 3060 percent of Europe's population,reducing the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400. This has been seen as...

More than three hundred years before the birth of Christ, a traveller from the Greek colony of Marseilles, named Pytheas, made known to the civilized world the existence of a people called Guttones, who lived near the Frische Haff, in the country since known as East Prussia, and traded in the amber that was gathered on the Baltic shores. For four whole centuries these amber merchants of the Baltic are heard of no more. The elder Pliny, a Roman writer who died in the year 79 after Christ, t...

Heather Tallchief escaped from the USA with the man she loved and $2.5 million that didn't belong to her. She must have been on an incredible high. However, the buzz didn't last long. Soon after she and Roberto Solanis landed in Amsterdam to start their new life together, her lover vanished with the loot. Read Heather's incredible story and many more in Fugitives, a book that explores the realities of life on the run from the perspective of the world's Most Wanted. Contents:...

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thie...