This book has been written for the student and general reader to study the Franco regime within an accessible framework. It explores the various views of Franco provided by biographers and historians, and acknowledges that political bias and various moral stances are forever evident. The background of any character is critical and Part One is a brief summary of Spanish history during this period. Part Two examines Franco the person, and Part Three looks at his highly contentious polices during World War Two. The final section explores Franco and postwar Spain as a pariah state gaining a small degree of respectability because of Franco’s attempted manipulation of the Vatican, and his relationship with America during the Cold War. Franco was a long-surviving dictator from the 1930s and highly repressive to the bitter end, despised by many and feared by his countrymen, yet respected by others.

There are some figures in modern history who stand out not just for their amoral conduct but their cruelty. This book explores the life of the notorious Beria, Stalin’s henchman. The first part provides an outline of the turbulent history of Russia from 1900 to 1953, in order to set the background from which Beria emerged. The second section presents a biography of Beria from his youth, his early education, and his obsequious behaviour towards Stalin to his rise to be the head of the NKVD (KGB) and later to be amongst the most senior leaders of the Communist structure in the USSR. He was responsible for the deaths of millions (and for organising the Katyń massacre), infamous for murdering colleagues, and a sexual predator, and became the most feared man in the USSR next to Stalin. The third and fourth parts move away from history and biography to moral philosophy, in order to understand from where such evil conduct arises. The question of free-will is explored in the light of human insight, and these sections also discuss the most recent scientific claims concerning human behaviour, as well as the factors which influence people in decision making.

This book challenges the commonly held belief that Nationalism is a recent phenomenon. It surveys European history from the tribal stage to 1989-90, and concludes with a commentary on events between 1990 and the European Elections of May 2019. During this review, it comments on the growth of nations across the European scene and the early signs of the various types of nationalism. Nationalism demands many qualifying adjectives, and this is examined as its variations occur. The study explores humanity’s propensities, especially the sense of alienation towards those who speak another language or have a different ethnicity, customs, or religious belief. In addition, it looks at humanity’s other inclinations to seek territory, wealth, resources, power and influence. These determinants, it is argued, form the basis of Nationalism, whether it is projected by the rulers or emerges from the populace. The book proposes that Nationalism is as “old as the hills”, but became dangerously aggressive in the twentieth century and remains a serious issue.

Detective crime novel with s̀hades of Agatha Christie' mingled with the spirit of Umberto Eco. A bestseller in Italy and Germany.

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases: A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial. A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience? A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time. Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self.

"As gripping as a good thriller." --The Washington Post Unpack the science of secrecy and discover the methods behind cryptography--the encoding and decoding of information--in this clear and easy-to-understand young adult adaptation of the national bestseller that's perfect for this age of WikiLeaks, the Sony hack, and other events that reveal the extent to which our technology is never quite as secure as we want to believe. Coders and codebreakers alike will be fascinated by history's most mesmerizing stories of intrigue and cunning--from Julius Caesar and his Caeser cipher to the Allies' use of the Enigma machine to decode German messages during World War II. Accessible, compelling, and timely, The Code Book is sure to make readers see the past--and the future--in a whole new way. "Singh's power of explaining complex ideas is as dazzling as ever." --The Guardian

This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.

MAN BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the acclaimed author of Outlaws • For decades, Enric Marco was revered as a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a crusader for justice, and a Holocaust survivor. But in May 2005, at the height of his renown, he was exposed as a fraud. Marco was never in a Nazi concentration camp. And perhaps the rest of his past was fabricated, too, a combination of his delusions of grandeur and his compulsive lying. In this hypnotic narrative, which combines fiction and nonfiction, detective story and war story, biography and autobiography, Javier Cercas sets out to unravel Marco’s enigma. With both profound compassion and lacerating honesty, Cercas probes one man’s gigantic lie to explore the deepest, most flawed parts of our humanity.