Further Details into the Criminal Life of a Former Football Star From teenage gang member to $40 million star of the New England Patriots, from All-American college player to drug addict, murderer, dead by suicide in his jail cell at age twenty-seven . . . you think you know the Aaron Hernandez story? You don’t. For the first time, Aaron Hernandez’s Killing Fields will reveal the real, hitherto unknown motive for the killing of Odin Lloyd—the only crime for which Hernandez was ever convicted and a revelation so shocking it will shake the foundations of the NFL itself. It will also unpick a pattern of violence and brutality stretching back to his time as a teenager at the University of Florida, revealing further shooting victims, evidence of his involvement in the double murder of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado in 2012, and, in a world exclusive, a compelling case for a fourth murder victim, shot just eleven days before the slaying of Odin Lloyd. Featuring new interviews with serving police investigators, prosecutors, psychologists, attorneys—as well as key witnesses including Hernandez’s drug dealer, a male stripper he hired days before the killing of Lloyd—plus extensive testimony from relatives of Hernandez’s victims, Killing Fields is the exhaustive, definitive account of the rise and fall of a man undone by his own appetite for violence, gangsterism, power, drugs, and self-destruction. This is the real Aaron Hernandez story—and perhaps just the beginning of a whole new murder investigation.
In The Claims of Kinfolk, Dylan Penningroth uncovers an extensive informal economy of property ownership among slaves and sheds new light on African American family and community life from the heyday of plantation slavery to the "freedom generation" of the 1870s. By focusing on relationships among blacks, as well as on the more familiar struggles between the races, Penningroth exposes a dynamic process of community and family definition. He also includes a comparative analysis of slavery and slave property ownership along the Gold Coast in West Africa, revealing significant differences between the African and American contexts. Property ownership was widespread among slaves across the antebellum South, as slaves seized the small opportunities for ownership permitted by their masters. While there was no legal framework to protect or even recognize slaves' property rights, an informal system of acknowledgment recognized by both blacks and whites enabled slaves to mark the boundaries of possession. In turn, property ownership--and the negotiations it entailed--influenced and shaped kinship and community ties. Enriching common notions of slave life, Penningroth reveals how property ownership engendered conflict as well as solidarity within black families and communities. Moreover, he demonstrates that property had less to do with individual legal rights than with constantly negotiated, extralegal social ties.
The Eighties were about big ideas writ large - new money, new style, gender fluidity, gay pride, attritional politics, the 'special relationship', nuclear fear, AIDS, cocaine, ecstasy, tabloid royalty, the rise of urban pop, and ultimately geopolitical chaos. Using a big narrative approach, Dylan Jones' history of the decade in pop frames the decade through some of its most important and popular hits, choosing records which either epitomised their time, or ushered in a new cultural shift. So we move seamlessly from Rapper's Delight and the genre defining moment of hip hop into The Specials' spectral, Ghost Town; from ABC and the apotheosis of New Pop (The Look of Love) to Madonna's breakthrough moment with Like a Virgin, and so on. In the '80s each year brought a new twist as technology shifted and genres snowballed, MTV reigned supreme and the story of pop became globalised. It was a decade of excess in all areas, especially ambition, but it was in the transcendent moments of pop perfection that the '80s found its true art-form. Subjective and idiosyncratic, SHINY AND NEW takes us from downtown New York to post-industrial Manchester, in the first widescreen attempt to weave together the stories, the songs and events that re-shaped music and society.
Thirty-five eclectic and chilling stories from the world of true crime. Serial killers young and old, celebrity deaths, cannibals, necrophiles, mysterious cults, online killers, and other darkly fascinating chapters in the annuals of crime. All this and more awaits in Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 2.
A second all new volume of celebrity deaths and murders. The cases that follow are eclectic and darkly fascinating. Drug overdoses, murders, television suicides, crazed fans, unsolved deaths, autoerotic asphyxiation, car crashes, freak accidents, doomed child stars, and so on. New additions include James Dean, Peaches Geldof, Paul Walker, Steve Irwin, Whitney Houston, Christine Chubbuck, Lana Clarkson, Caroline Flack, Jayne Mansfield, and many more.
Poison is a fairly popular method of murder in true crime history because it doesn't require brute force or a weapon of any kind. You can simply slip it in a cake or a drink. Anything you want. A lot of poisoners think they stand a much better chance of getting away with murder but this is a misguided view. It might be more complex to capture a poisoner than a mad axeman but the police tend to catch up with poisoners in the end. In this book we'll take a look at some of the deadliest poisoners in true crime history. What follows is a grisly gallery of heartless rogues who you definitely wouldn't want making the tea.
Antecedents of Censuses From Medieval to Nation States, the first of two volumes, examines the influence of social formations on censuses from the medieval period through current times. The authors argue that relative influence of states and societies is probably not linear, but depends on the actual historical configuration of the states and societies, as well as the type of population information being collected. They show how information gathering is an outcome of the interaction between states and social forces, and how social resistance to censuses has frequently circumvented their planning, prevented their implementation, and influenced their accuracy.
Discover wonder. “A wanderlust-whetting cabinet of curiosities on paper.”— New York Times Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura is a phenomenon of a travel book that shot to the top of bestseller lists when it was first published and changed the way we think about the world, expanding our sense of how strange and marvelous it really is. This second edition takes readers to even more curious and unusual destinations, with more than 100 new places, dozens and dozens of new photographs, and two very special features: twelve city guides, covering Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Moscow, New York City, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Plus a foldout map with a dream itinerary for the ultimate around-the-world road trip. More a cabinet of curiosities than traditional guidebook, Atlas Obscura revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the mysterious. Here are natural wonders, like the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can sit and drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M. C. Escher–like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby-Jumping Festival in Spain—and no, it’s not the babies doing the jumping, but masked men dressed as devils who vault over rows of squirming infants. Every page gets to the very core of why humans want to travel in the first place: to be delighted and disoriented, uprooted from the familiar and amazed by the new. With its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, and new city guides, it is a book you can open anywhere and be transported. But proceed with caution: It’s almost impossible not to turn to the next entry, and the next, and the next.
Dylan Jones’s engrossing, magisterial biography of David Bowie is unlike any Bowie story ever written. Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, this oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. Tracing Bowie’s life from the English suburbs to London to New York to Los Angeles, Berlin, and beyond, its collective voices describe a man profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry; an intuitive artist who could absorb influences through intense relationships and yet drop people cold when they were no longer of use; and a social creature equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra. By turns insightful and deliciously gossipy, David Bowie is as intimate a portrait as may ever be drawn. It sparks with admiration and grievances, lust and envy, as the speakers bring you into studios and bedrooms they shared with Bowie, and onto stages and film sets, opening corners of his mind and experience that transform our understanding of both artist and art. Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones’s interviews with him across two decades, David Bowie is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time.
Less than one year after the death of his father, 18-year-old Alex Underwood has his life turned upside down when he finds his mother and sister murdered in their home. Follow his journey as the demons inside him force their way out, tearing him apart psychologically.
Drawing on contributions from remaining members, contemporaneous musicians, critics, filmmakers, and the generation of artists who emerged in their wake, this "monumental origin story" celebrates the legacy of the Velvet Underground, which burns brighter than ever in the 21st century (New York Times bestselling author Bob Spitz). Rebellion always starts somewhere, and in the music world of the transgressive teen—whether it be the 1960s or the 2020s—the Velvet Underground represents ground zero. Crystallizing the idea of the bohemian, urban, narcissistic art school gang around a psychedelic rock and roll band—a stylistic idea that evolved in the rarefied environs of Andy Warhol’s Factory—the Velvets were the first major American rock group with a mixed gender line-up. They never smiled in photographs, wore sunglasses indoors, and invented the archetype that would be copied by everyone from Sid Vicious to Bobby Gillespie. They were avant-garde nihilists, writing about drug abuse, prostitution, paranoia, and sado-masochistic sex at a time when the rest of the world was singing about peace and love. In that sense they invented punk and then some. It could even be argued that they invented modern New York. Drawing on interviews and material relating to all major players, from Lou Reed, John Cale, Mo Tucker, Andy Warhol, Jon Savage, Nico, David Bowie, Mary Harron, and many more, award-winning journalist Dylan Jones breaks down the band’s whirlwind of subversion and, in a narrative rich in drama and detail, proves why the Velvets remain the original kings and queens of edge.
A witty, stylish and indispensable guide to being a modern man. It is tough being a man in the twenty-first century. First there are the big dilemmas, like how to get a pay rise and how to suck up to your boss. Then there are the minor irritations: how do you beat jet-lag, and how do you stop your trousers sliding off their hangers? And finally there are all those things you ought to know, but don't: how to jump-start a car, how to buy lingerie, how to stop smoking, how to tie a Windsor Knot, how to behave at a lap-dancing club ... the list is endless. Fear not. In Mr Jones Rules, the highly respected editor of GQ magazine, draws on his wealth of experience to give the final answer to these questions and more. It will be the must-have present for every husband, boyfriend and son this Christmas.
Most of us see sports as a welcome—even blessed—relief from the challenges and frustrations of everyday life. We want to sit back, open a beer, and enjoy the game. But many of those who bring us the game have a different agenda—they use their broadcasting platform to harangue us with their own politically correct preoccupations. If a seventh-round NFL draft pick who can't make the team or an over-the-hill basketball player declares that he's gay, he gets wall-to-wall media coverage and is hailed as a hero. If a stripper accuses college lacrosse players of rape, liberal sports reporters lead the lynch mob—with no apologies when the bearers of "white privilege" are proved innocent. In his blistering new book Bias in the Booth, sports reporter and commentator Dylan Gwinn takes you inside the sports media spin machine to reveal what they hope you won't notice: the sports media are no different from the news and entertainment media.
“This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry.” —Letter written by Princess Diana, late 1996 It is a moment that remains frozen in history. When the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales, spun fatally out of control in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris in August 1997, the world was shocked by what appeared to be a terrible accident. But two decades later, the circumstances surrounding what really happened that night—and, crucially, why it happened—remain mired in suspicion, controversy, and misinformation. Until now. Dylan Howard has re-examined all of the evidence surrounding Diana’s death—official documents, eyewitness testimony and Diana’s own private journals—as well as amassing dozens of new interviews with investigators, witnesses, and those closest to the princess to ask one very simple question: Was the death of Princess Diana a tragedy…or treason? Diana: Case Solved has uncovered in unprecedented detail just how much of a threat Diana became to the establishment. In these pages you will learn of the covert diaries and recordings she made, logging the Windsors’ most intimate secrets and hidden scandals as a desperate kind of insurance policy. You will learn how the royals were not the only powerful enemies she made, as her ground-breaking campaigns against AIDS and landmines drew admiration from the public, but also enmity from powerful establishment figures including international arms dealers, the British and American governments, and the MI6 and the CIA. And, in a dramatic return to the Parisian streets where she met her fate, the two questions that have plagued investigators for over twenty years will finally be answered: Why was Diana being driven in a car previously written off as a death trap? And who was really behind the wheel of the mysterious white Fiat at the scene of the crash?
Thirty-four eclectic and spine chilling stories from the world of true crime. Serial killers, cannibals, necrophiles, celebrities with the darkest secrets, medical killers, mysterious killers who were never captured, movie production deaths, poisoners, spree killers, supernatural Victorian monsters, and many more darkly fascinating chapters in the annuals of crime. All this and more awaits in Chilling True Crime Stories - Volume 4.
The history of true crime in Britain is a long and, as we shall see, often stranger than fiction tale. The book that follows offers an eclectic stew of strange and perplexing British true crime cases. These cases are all disconcertingly odd and in many instances downright bizarre. We have the murder of an elderly famer brutally killed with a pitchfork in what may or may not have been a case involving witchcraft. Then there is a shocking train murder which took place in a closed carriage in broad daylight during an afternoon commuter run to London. We also have the baffling case of a retired spinster who was gruesomely killed for no apparent reason in her own home on Halloween night. We shall also be examining the modern legend of the alleged maniac said to randomly push his victims into Manchester's murky canals. Then we'll take a look at the monstrous Victorian terror known as Spring-Heeled Jack. We shall stop too to consider the unsolved murder of a young man in Sussex who was found dissected inside two abandoned suitcases. We shall also explore the high profile killing of Jill Dando - a case which surely ranks as one of the most shocking and baffling celebrity deaths ever to occur in Britain. As if that wasn't enough we also have grave robbers, cannibals, the Brighton trunk murders, a woman who staged a crackpot hoax abduction of her own daughter, a gruesome murderer who operated at the same time as Jack the Ripper and had the macabre signature of leaving torsos and body parts scattered around London, and a suave post-war con artist who in reality was a depraved sexual serial killer. So, draw the curtains, turn off the lights, make sure the doors are locked, and settle down to explore some of the strangest true crime cases Blighty has to offer...
A practical guide to the fascinating art of reading hands. Cheiromancy is the art of handreading in which all aspects of a person's hand are considered in order to gain an accurate picture of their inner nature, distinct from the fortune telling of palmistry. What has come down to us as palmistry today is a rather degenerate and effete form of the ancient discipline of chiromancy. The word cheiromancy comes from the Greek chir meaning 'hand', and manteia meaning 'divination', literally meaning 'divination through the hand'. The Hand Reveals is not merely theoretical: at various points throughout the book readers are encouraged to try and apply this knowledge at every opportunity to find confirmation of the ideas. There is a considerable amount of knowledge and information compressed into these pages, and even the most diligent student would have difficulty in digesting it in one reading. It is recommended that you refer back as often as necessary to go the material you have read, to allow your understanding of cheiromancy to grow gradually. Originally published in 1993, this edition has been revised and updated with new material.
It's time to get off the beaten path. Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 700 of the strangest and most curious places in the world. Talk about a bucket list: here are natural wonders—the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa that's so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan's 40-year hole of fire called the Gates of Hell, a graveyard for decommissioned ships on the coast of Bangladesh, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England. Created by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton, ATLAS OBSCURA revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book to enter anywhere, and will be as appealing to the armchair traveler as the die-hard adventurer. Anyone can be a tourist. ATLAS OBSCURA is for the explorer.
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE The celebrated first memoir from arguably the most influential singer-songwriter in the country, Bob Dylan. 'I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.' So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan’s eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan’s New York is a magical city of possibilities - smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book’s side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota, and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times. By turns revealing, poetical, passionate, and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan’s thoughts and influences. Dylan’s voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful, and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art. 'Chronicles stunned everyone . . . [it's] clear, apparently frank, unremittingly serious about his musical influences and exquisitely written. It is, in fact, a masterpiece' Sunday Times 'Entertaining and surprisingly deprecating... The book's structure is elegant . . . Chronicles is tautly written, vividly cinematic, and funny . . . a courageous little book' Financial Times 'There is something on every page, in every paragraph, that demands attention . . . In rock and roll terms, this book is like discovering the lost diaries of Shakespeare. It may be the most extraordinarily intimate autobiography by a 20th-century legend' Daily Telegraph
The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music is an incredible and opinionated collection of celebrated cultural critic Dylan Jones's thoughts on more than 350 of the most important artists around the world—alive and dead, big and small, at length and in brief. This A to Z reference is the true musical heir to David Thomson's seminal The New Biographical Dictionary of Popular Film. Jones writes entertainingly about bands that have inspired, bedeviled, and fascinated him over the years.
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