Author(s): Simon Sebag Montefiore

Psychology & Self Help

The preferred method of torture of Vlad Dracul, 15th-century prince of Wallachia, was to attach a horse to each of the victim's legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into his body; Vlad also enjoyed scalping, skinning and boiling alive. The 14th-century Mongol warlord Tamerlane once ordered the building of a pyramid of 70,000 human skulls from those that his army had beheaded In 101 World Heroes Simon Sebag Montefiore selected his ultimate heroes and heroines. Now he offers his readers the other darker side of the coin. Monsters presents, in chronological order, grimly fascinating profiles of 101 notorious and profoundly sinister individuals whose actions have one thing in common they have had a baleful and blood-soaked impact on the annals of world history. From Attila the Hun to Basil the Bulgar Slayer, from Pedro the Cruel to Ivan the Terrible, and from Richard III to Saddam Hussein, Monsters is a devilishly compelling gallery of history's greatest ghouls, including: Caligula, Richard III, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Charles Manson, Herman Cortes, Adolf Hitler, Al Capone, Laventi Beria, Lucrezia Borgia, Nicolae Ceausescu, Vlad the Impaler, Saddam Hussein, Simon de Montfort, Pablo Escobar, Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Idi Amin, Attila, Josef Mengele, Heinrich Himmler, Mao Zedong, Osama bin Laden, Kim Il Sung, Slobodan Milosevic, Empress Cixi, Tomas de Torquemeda.

About the author:
Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian, novelist and journalist, is best known as the author of Prince of Princes: The life of Potemkin, Stalin: At the Court of the Red Tsar and Young Stalin. He lives in London, and is married to the novelist Santa Montefiore.