A new theory on how World War I started--not with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but rather 10 years earlier, by power-hungry men whose lies have infiltrated history

Hidden History uniquely exposes those responsible for World War I. It reveals how accounts of the war's origins have been deliberately falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of very rich and powerful men in London responsible for the most heinous crime perpetrated on humanity. For 10 years, they plotted the destruction of Germany as the first stage of their plan to take control of the world. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was no chance happening. It lit a fuse that had been carefully set through a chain of command stretching from Sarajevo through Belgrade and St. Petersburg to that cabal in London. Our understanding of these events has been firmly trapped in a web of falsehood and duplicity carefully constructed by the victors at Versailles in 1919 and maintained by compliant historians ever since. The official version is fatally flawed, warped by the volume of evidence they destroyed or concealed from public view. Hidden History poses a tantalizing challenge. The authors ask only that you examine the evidence they lay before you.

A revealing biography of the most decorated soldier of World War II

More than half a century after his death, Lt Col. Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the most decorated British soldier of World War II, receiving four DSOs, the Croix de Guerre, and the Légion d'honneur, and he pioneered tactics used today by the SAS and other special operations units worldwide. Rogue Warrior of the SAS tells the remarkable life story of Colonel Paddy, whose exceptional physical strength and uniquely swift reflexes made him a fearsome opponent. But his unorthodox rules of war and his resentment of authority would deny him the ultimate accolade of the Victoria Cross. Mayne also had a conflicted personal life, dominated by his mother. He never married and several of his contemporaries felt that his resentment of gays in the military reflected his concerns about his own sexuality. Mayne was undoubtedly a complex character and here the authors have presented a rounded and perceptive portrait of the man. Drawing on personal letters and family papers, declassified SAS files and records, together with the Official SAS Diary compiled in wartime and eyewitness accounts from many who served with him, the picture emerges of a soldier who, although a flawed hero, was unquestionably one of the most distinctive combatants of the campaigns in the Western Desert and Europe.

When veteran law-enforcement officer and lifelong motorcycle lover William Queen penetrated the San Fernando chapter of the notorious Mongols, he was at the mercy of psychopaths who sought to have him prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling and doing drugs to arms trafficking, driving getaway cars and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol 'ol' lady' after a brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend.

Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, Queen came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from his relatives and friends, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenalin-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America.

Arsenal's on-field success has been well documented. But what has never been written before is the equally remarkable history of Arsenal's rebels, both on and off the pitch. Spanning almost 120 years, and set against a backdrop of turbulent social and political change, Rebels for the Cause assesses the legacy and impact of Arsenal's most controversial players, officials, and matches. From hard men like '30s player Wilf Copping to the reformed wild ones of recent years such as Tony Adams, Jon Spurling highlights the infamous figures whose refusal to conform has made them terrace legends. Featuring extensive interviews with 15 former players, Rebels for the Cause is an indispensable guide to the alternative.

An unforgettable cocktail of drugs, riots, rape, beatings, murders, and kidnappings--the unbelievable true story of years spent in a South American jail

It won't happen to me. That's what I thought when I got on the plane to Venezuela. But it did--I got caught.

Caught smuggling half a million euros' worth of cocaine, Paul Keany was sexually assaulted by Venezuelan antidrugs officers before being sentenced to eight years in the notorious Los Teques prison outside Caracas. There he was plunged into a nightmarish world of coke-fueled killings, gun battles, stabbings, extortion, and forced hunger strikes until finally, just over two years into his sentence, he gained early parole and embarked on a daring escape from South America. Aided by his extensive prison diaries, Keany reveals the true horror of life inside Los Teques: a shocking underworld behind bars where inmates pay protection money to stay alive, prostitutes do the rounds, and vast amounts of cocaine are smuggled in for cell-block bosses to sell on to prisoners for huge profits. This remarkable story is told by Keany with honesty, courage, and even humor, despite knowing that every day behind bars might have been his last.

Greyfriar's Cemetery in Edinburgh has a centuries-old reputation for being haunted. Its gruesome history includes witchcraft, body-snatching, desecration, corpse dumping, and live burial. In 1998, something new and inexplicable began occurring in the graveyard. Visitors encountered cold spots, strange smells, and banging noises. They found themselves overcome by nausea, or cut and bruised by something they couldn't see. Over a period of two years, 24 people were knocked unconscious. Homes next to the graveyard were plagued by smashing crockery, moving objects, and unidentified laughter. Witnesses to these incidents ran into the hundreds. The section of Greyfriars where the attacks occurred is now chained shut, but the poltergeist still grows stronger.

Robin Friday was an exceptional footballer who should have played for England. But he never did--why? Because Robin Friday was a man who would not bow down to anyone, who refused to take life seriously, and who lived every moment as if it were his last. Loved and admired by everyone who saw him, Friday also had a dark side--troubled, strong-minded, reckless, he would end up destroying himself. Tragically, after years of alcohol and drug abuse, he died at the age of 38 without ever having fulfilled his potential. This book provides the first full appreciation of a man too long forgotten by the world of football.

The rugby union has undergone immense change in the past two decades--introducing a World Cup, accepting professionalism, and creating a global market in players. This resource covers all of the great matches, teams, and players while also placing them in the context of the social, political, and economic changes which have affected the course of rugby's development. International in scope, this history includes not only Britain and France but also the great rugby powers of the southern hemisphere and other successful rugby nations, such as Argentina, Fiji, and Japan. Rich in anecdotes--including the story of why 1895 is the most important date in both the rugby union and rugby league history, allegations of devil worship at a Welsh rugby club, the game's contribution to the Cuban Revolution, and why the most fearsome of all New Zealand forwards was also a proficient knitter--this reference is a must-read for any fan of the oval ball.

In this revised edition of a classic of contemporary Scottish culture, Billy Kay vigorously renews the social, cultural, and political debate on Scotland's linguistic future. He compares Scottish with other European lesser-used languages, and celebrates its survival in its various dialects, literature, and song.

The story of the Town Below the Ground is one of the most disturbing in the annals of Scottish history. For almost 250 years, Edinburgh was surrounded by a giant defensive wall and, unable to expand its boundaries, it became the most densely populated city in Europe. When buildings could go no higher, people were forced to construct new edifices over the existing structures. An underground slum developed, where subterranean dwellers lived in darkness and abject poverty, ignored by chroniclers of the time. Edinburgh's population eventually came to believe that the city--out of sight and out of mind since its abandonment in the mid-19th century--had never been there at all. This is the first book to fully chronicle Edinburgh's Town Below the Ground--its history and structure, its inhabitants and the lives they led, the story of its rediscovery, the parts that still remain, and the tales that made it legendary.

Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie is one of history's greatest heroes, but also one of its greatest enigmas--a shadowy figure whose edges have been blurred by myth and legend. James MacKay uses all his skills as a historical detective to produce this definitive biography, telling the incredible story of a man who, without wealth or noble birth, rose to become Guardian of Scotland. William Wallace, with superb generalship and tactical genius, led a country with no previous warlike tradition to triumph gloriously over the much larger, better-armed, and better-trained English forces. 700 years later, the heroism and betrayal, the valiant deeds and the dark atrocities, and the struggle of a small nation against a brutal and powerful empire, still create a compelling tale.

The truth about the 1996 Everest disaster by one of its survivors, uncovering crucial new information On May 10 and 11, 1996, eight climbers perished in what remains the worst disaster in Everest's history. Following the tragedy, numerous accounts were published, with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air becoming an international bestseller--but the whole story has not been told. This book reveals for the first time the full, startling facts that led to the tragedy. Graham Ratcliffe, the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice, was a firsthand witness, having spent the night on Everest's South Col at 26,000 feet, sheltering from the deadly storm. For years, he has shouldered a burden of guilt, feeling that he and his teammates could have saved lives that fateful night. His quest for answers has led to discoveries so important to an understanding of the disaster that he now questions why these facts were not made public sooner. History is dotted with high-profile disasters that both horrify and capture the attention of the public, but very rarely is the prevailing view of them revised to such devastating effect.

An explosive new study from an expert on the JFK assassination brings fascinating new evidence to the debate

The American people were not satisfied that Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential inquiry into the murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 had revealed the truth. This inspired a people's investigation, the nature and the scale of which were unequaled. It was the beginning of a quest to establish the truth which has so far taken 50 years and which still goes on. This exhaustive account of that quest is told through the eyes of a historian who has been involved in it from the very beginning. It is a story of treachery, lies, deceit, and murder. As the investigation has progressed over the years, the revelations have been breathtaking, the facts staggering, and the real story so dramatic that fiction simply cannot equal it.

A global workforce. Billions in sales. But, unlike Tesco or BP, few have heard of it. The Cartel is Britain's biggest drugs organization, a shadowy network stretching from the freezing, foggy banks of the Mersey to the glittering marinas of Marbella, from the coffee shops of Amsterdam to the trading floors of Canary Wharf. On the bottom rung, there are street gangs who dress in black North Face jackets and are armed to the teeth. At the top, there are drug lords worth more than 200 million who hide behind a web of front companies. It began as a loose alliance of petty criminals in a run-down city in northern England and grew until its members were using private planes to skip between continents, dealing drugs on an industrial scale. In The Cartel, Graham Johnson tells the inside story.

Aden, June 20, 1967: two army Land Rovers burn ferociously in the midday sun. The bodies of nine British soldiers litter the road. Bright flames mixed with thick, black smoke bellows above Crater town, a tough Arab neighborhood built on top of a dormant volcano. Surrounded by high rugged peaks and perched on the south-western edge of the Arabian peninsular, it is home to insurgents, terrorists, and gangsters, who establish no-go areas against the British-backed Federation government. Crater had come to symbolize Arab nationalist defiance in the face of the world's most powerful empire. Hovering 2,000 ft. above the smouldering destruction, a tiny Scout helicopter surveys the scene. Its passenger is the recently arrived commanding officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell. Soon the world's media would christen him Mad Mitch in recognition of his extremely robust and controversial reoccupation of Crater two weeks later. Mad Mitch was truly a man out of his time. Supremely self-confident and debonair, he was an empire builder, not dismantler, and railed against the national malaise he felt had gripped Britain's political establishment. Drawing on a wide array of never-before-seen archival sources and eyewitness testimonies, Mad Mitch's Tribal Law tells the remarkable story of inspiring leadership, loyalty, and betrayal in the final days of British Empire. It is, above all, a shocking account of Britain's forgotten war on terror.

Nazi Gold is the real-life story of the theft of a fabulous treasure--the German national gold and foreign currency reserves, which disappeared in transit following the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945. The authors' quest led them to a murky, dangerous, post-war world of racketeering, corruption, and gang warfare. Their reporting, matching eyewitness testimony with recently declassified Top Secret documents from the US Archives, lays bare this monumental crime in a narrative which throngs with SS desperadoes, a redheaded queen of crime, American military governors living like kings, and investigators impeded at every step and in fear of their lives. This fully updated edition of Nazi Gold includes startling evidence that throws further light on the crime, including the authors' recent discovery of some of the missing treasure in the Bank of England.

An astonishing, first-hand account of an unknown chapter in Mafia history

A revelatory and dramatic true-life thriller spanning much of the 20th century, this page-turning chronicle tells of an elaborate Mafia plan to invade Europe, taking over its gambling, by using 1960s London as a bridgehead. The capital city of the Swinging Sixties was a world of gambling, guns, and gangsters. Several veterans of the era are astonished that they survived it and some feel protected enough--now that most of the killers are themselves dead--to reveal to author Douglas Thompson the details of one of history's greatest criminal conspiracies, and of how world-champion boxer Freddie Mills really died. The tension is ferocious as the tale moves from London to New York and Las Vegas, down to Miami, into Havana, on to the Bahamas, and back to an unexpected denouement in London. This brutal, terrifying, intrigue-packed account of the Mob's Machiavellian global manipulation of governments and officials even unearths a London connection to the assassination of JFK. Recounting events from the viewpoint of the pawns as well as the kingmakers, this chronicle includes big players of Mafia history, controlled by the gangster genius Meyer Lansky, but it also considers the hit men, the fixers, the hoodlums, and the wiseguys.

Far from being grim, Lancashite is a place of wit and wonder, romance and surprise, a land of exotic influence whose people have always looked outward to sophistications and influences beyond frontiers and seas. Join Charles Nevin, Fleet Street journalist and humorist, as he returns to his roots and reveals all this and more. Discover the true Camelot and the beauty that is rugby league. Visit Lost Lancashire and its great twin cities, Manchester and Liverpool. Mull over why Britain's greatest comics, from Laurel to Coogan, Formby to Vegas, Dodd to Kay, Fields to Wood, Morecambe and Dawson, have all come from Lancs.

Few cities in the world abound with so many extraordinary stories as Glasgow. The city has been the silent witness to some of the most significant events of the past century, from major triumphs to cataclysmic calamities, and the best of these anecdotes are compiled here to form this unique collection. Amongst the notable events revisited are the launching of the Queen Mary, which captivated the city's inhabitants in 1934, the victorious 16-month work-in campaign by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in the early 1970s, the Ibrox disaster of 1971, and the plague that gripped the Gorbals in 1900. Some of Glasgow's most successful people are also covered in this title, including Clydeside revolutionary John Maclean, founder of the Barras Maggie McIver and the inimitable Billy Connolly, whose humor and colorful personality are synonymous with the city. From the Battle of George Square to the bravery of the Glasgow people during the Blitz, Great Glasgow Stories provides an all-encompassing view of the city throughout the eras.

Thaim wi a guid Scots tongue in their heid are fit tae gang ower the warld.

While others have questioned the self-confidence of the Scots, Kay has traveled the world from Bangkok to Brazil, Warsaw to Waikiki and found ringing endorsements for the integrity and intellect, the poetry and passion of the Scottish people in every country he has visited. He expands people's view of Scotland by relating remarkable stories of the wealthy Scottish merchant community in Gdansk; of national geniuses of Scots descent, such as Lermontov in Russia and Grieg in Norway; of an American Civil War blamed on Sir Walter Scott and initiated in the St. Andrews Society of Charleston; of inspirational missionaries in Calabar and Budapest; of Scotch Professors establishing football in soccer strongholds like Barcelona and São Paulo; of pioneers like Sandeman and Cockburn and the Scottish roots of many of the great wines of Europe; and of amazing Scottish involvement in liberation movements in Malawi, Chile, Peru, Greece, Corsica, and India. The result is a celebration of the enormous contribution the Scots have made to the modern world.