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Never in recorded history has there been a group of murderers as deadly as the Thugs. For nearly two centuries, groups of these lethal criminals haunted the roads of India, slaughtering travellers whom they met along the way with such efficiency that over the years tens of thousands of men, women and children simply vanished without trace. Mike Dash, one of our best popular historians, has devoted years to combing archives in both India and Britain to discover how the Thugs lived and worked. Painstakingly researched and grippingly written, Thug tells, for the first time the full story of the Thugs' rise and fall from the cult's beginnings in the late seventeenth century to its eventual demise at the hands of British East India Company officer William Sleeman in 1840.

The soil of central India hides more than the bones of long-dead giants. The East India Company is master of almost the entire subcontinent, but real power is now with the Crown. Far from the great games of the empire, Captain William Henry Sleeman is content to administer Jabalpur district and dig for remnants of petrified bones with his charming and knowledgeable wife. Until he is tasked with investigating the activities of an obscure group of criminals who are said to strangle their victims. As Sleeman uncovers the many layers of the Phansigar problem, he finds a language unlike any other, and a set of beliefs, lore and superstitions seemingly drawn from the soul of the countryside. He finds orchards of corpses, and a hierarchy of stranglers, but also ordinary men driven to murder. He hears subtle murmurs of discontentment at the changes which have come to a land believed by some to be unchanging. He finds auguries of a conflict to come. And behind it all, the legend of a mysterious, beautiful man, whose capture might be the key to understanding the Phansigars. Sleeman’s inquiries will make him confront the nature of his beloved adopted homeland and of the mighty people in Calcutta who he serves. Through the prism of caste, the consequent web of intricate social and cultural relationships, and the nature of travel in the hinterland, he will see the real face of India and come across its uncomfortable, bleak truths. But to unravel such truths is not easy…

Simple Sabotage Field Manual was authored byby The United States Office of Strategic Services and is a must for any student of strategy and sabotage.

Based largely on new material, this book examines thuggee as a type of banditry, emerging in a specific socio-economic and geographic context. The British usually described the thugs as fanatic assassins and Kali-worshippers, yet Wagner argues that the history of thuggee need no longer be limited to the study of its representation.

Thuggee, the controversial cult of ritual highway murderers "discovered" by the British in early nineteenth-century India, is one of the most sensational and contentious practices in South Asian history. This anthology brings together primary sources from the period of British involvement with thuggee many of which have long languished in the archives. It provides an insight into the production of colonial knowledge and explores how far the authentic voices of the accused thugs could be discerned in the detailed interviews and interrogations conducted by the British. The volume also includes a wide range of popular accounts and academic assessments from 1824 to 2006 shedding light on the shifting interpretations of this custom over the past two centuries.