This “immensely stimulating story of true crime down the ages” tells the history of human violence, from Peking Man to the Mafia (The Times, London). This landmark work offers a completely new approach to the history and psychology of human violence. Its sweep is broad, its research meticulous and detailed. Colin Wilson explores the bloodthirsty sadism of the ancient Assyrians and the mass slaughter by the armies led by Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Ivan the Terrible, and Vlad the Impaler. He delves into modern history, exploring the genocides practiced by Stalin and Hitler. He then takes a chilling look into the sex crimes and mass murders that have become symbols of the neuroses and intensity of modern life. With breathtaking audacity and stunning insight, Wilson puts criminality firmly in a wide, illuminating historical context. “A work of massive energy, compulsively readable, splendidly informative . . . it establishes Wilson in a European tradition of thought that includes H. G. Wells, Sartre and Shaw.” —Time Out London “A tremendous resource for crime buffs as well as a challenging exposition for some of the more subtle criminological thinking of our time.” —Kirkus Reviews

Excerpt from Researches Into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization In the first place, when a general law can be inferred from a group of facts, the use of detailed history is very much super seded. When we see a magnet attract a piece of iron, having come by experience to the general law that magnets attract iron, we do not take the trouble to go into the history Of the particular magnet in question. To some extent this direct reference to general laws may be made in the study of Civili zation. The four next chapters of the present book treat of the various ways in which man utters his thoughts, in Gestures, Words, Pictures, and Writing. Here, though Speech and Writing must be investigated historically, depending as they do in so great measure on the words and characters which were current in the world thousands Of years ago, on the other hand the gesture-language and picture-iriting may be mostly ex plained without the aid of history, as direct products Of the human mind. In the following chapter on Images and Names, an attempt is made to refer a great part Of the beliefs and practices included under the general name Of magic, to one very simple mental law, as resulting from a condition of mind which we of the more advanced races have almost outgrown, and in doing so have undergone one of the most notable changes which we can trace as having happened to mankind. And lastly, a particular habit Of mind accounts for a class Of stories which are here grouped together as Myths of Obser vation, as distinguished from the tales which make up the great bulk of the folk-lore of the world, many of which latter are now being Shown by the new school Of Comparative mythoo logista in Germany and England to have come into existence also by virtue Of a general law, but a very different one. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.