Nigel Blundell

On an internationally acknowledged Scale of Evil, these are the worlds worst serial killers. The qualifications for entry to this list of the vilest criminals of all time are a propensity for sadism, torture and murder without a shred of remorse. Using expert evidence, this book looks behind the shocking headlines and delves into the minds of monsters. What drove them to crime? What turned seemingly ordinary members of society into sick slayers. How did they self-justify their heinous deeds? And, quite simply, how did they get away with murder? Included in this catalogue of the worlds most evil killers are men who committed crimes so monstrous that they almost defy belief yet to their neighbours and work colleagues seemed quite normal. Dennis Rader was a respected pillar of society yet set out on nightly killing sprees. David Parker Ray was just an average working guy but had a torture chamber in his backyard. Fred and Rose West raised a large extended family yet violently abused and murdered their own children. These are examples of the killers who sank to the darkest depths of depravity. Find out what made them such monsters in Serial Killers: The Worlds Most Evil.

Mass murder is awful enough. But some serial killers not only embark on slaying to slake their perverted pleasures but enjoy the mutilation of their victims bodies and sometimes also revert to cannibalism. The simple act of slaying would sicken most people. Yet that is not sufficient a thrill for those who find the excitement begins once their victims are dead. Cutting up corpses is, of course, one way of disposing of the evidence. But here we examine the butchers who dismember for pleasure. They are monsters like Andrei Chikatilo, the so-called Rostov Ripper, who tortured, murdered, chopped up and sometimes cannibalised as many as 50 victims. Or they can be quite unassuming perverts like Dennis Nilsen, whose London house of horrors so overflowed with body parts that they blocked the drains. There is nothing new about this, the sickest side of homicide, of course. The most famous serial killer of all was Jack the Ripper and butchering maniacs have been slashing their bloody path through history ever since.

This book is a catalogue of disaster - literally. Within its pages are the major man-made calamities that shocked the world throughout the twentieth century. It was a period during which the power and scale of industrialisation changed the planet, an unforeseen consequence being the creation of more human-created catastrophes than ever before experienced. The events recorded here include the needless carnage of history's worst air disaster when two jumbo jets collided on the island of Tenerife. We recall the horrors of Aberfan, the Welsh village in which schoolchildren were buried alive. The story of the explosion aboard the Challenger space shuttle reveals how warnings that were ignored led to the deaths of seven astronauts. And we report on the failings that caused the nuclear nightmare at Chernobyl, a poisonous blot on the face of the globe. These and the other misadventures in this book were all man-made and, it seems, just waiting to happen. A further link between these horrific events is that they were all caused by either folly or greed - or both. But despite the tales of monstrous misfortune, many also produced heart-lifting stories of human resilience, selflessness, sacrifice and heroism.

History books tend to celebrate the successes, the geniuses, and the breakthroughs that have made our world what it is today, but what about the mistakes? This book examines the blunders and the goof-ups, both miniscule and colossal in scale, many of which have been lost to history. Readers will find humor in the story of the priest who married a bride to her groom's best man and cringe at the poor fool who thought he actually purchased the White House. They also will learn about mistakes that changed the course of history, like the sinking of the Titanic, the Exxon Valdez disaster, and the weapons of mass destruction that started a war but didn't exist. Sidebars, a glossary, and books and websites in the further reading section are also included.