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revelarts
09-30-2014, 05:27 PM
one I ran across this week,

A Criminal History of Mankind

Colin Wilson tells the story of human violence from Peking Man to the Mafia - taking into account the calculated sadism of the Assyrians, the opportunism of the Greek pirates, the brutality that made Rome the ‘razor king of the Mediterranean’, the mindless destruction of the Vandals, the mass slaughter of Genghis Khan, Tamurlane, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler and more. Each age has a unique characteristic pattern of crime. In the past three centuries crime has changed and evolved until the sex killer and the mass murderer have become symbols of all that is worst about our civilization. But this is not just a study in human depravity; it is an attempt to place crime in perspective against human discovery, exploration and invention. The result is a completely new approach to the history and psychology of human violence.

Lost to Time: Unforgettable Stories That History Forgot Hardcover
by Martin W. Sandler


Stories that history forgot…but readers will remember
“The only thing new in the world,” said Harry S. Truman, “is the history you don't know.” In this fresh and fascinating collection of historical vignettes, Martin W. Sandler (author of Resolute and Atlantic Ocean) restores to memory important events, people, and developments that have been lost to time.

Though barely known today, these are major historical stories, from Ziryab, an eighth-century black slave whose influence on music, cuisine, fashion, and manners still reverberates, to Cahokia, a 12th century city north of the Rio Grande, which at its zenith contained a population estimated to have been as high as 40,000 (more than any contemporary European city), to the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana on the Mississippi in 1865.
These tales are far from trivia; they illuminate little-known American and foreign achievements, ingenuity, heroics, blunders, and tragedies that changed the course of history and resonate today.