Our latest releases
-
GUILTY! The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals – J.P. Evans
This is Europe’s largely forgotten history of putting animal “criminals” on trial and either executing and torturing them or, for plagues of insects, ordering them to leave town not only by a certain day, but by an exact time. Such irrational barbarism is hard to fathom today, but as early as 824 all the way… Read more …
-
JOKER The History of Court Fools – John Doran
A Jester, Court jester, Trickster or Fool was historically a comedian and entertainer during the medieval and Renaissance eras who was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch. He was employed to bring some lightness to the courts of Medieval Europe, and to take the “edge” of de burden of reigning… Read more …
-
CARNY LIFE On the Road with a Circus – W.C. Thompson
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! STEP RIGHT UP! STEP RIGHT UP!” “We circus people have so high an opinion of our good qualities that we are not ashamed to introduce ourselves to you. As pilgrims with no abiding city, leading a life of multiplied activities and varied fortunes amid scenes of din and turmoil, hurry and agitation,… Read more …
-
PREJUDICES: First series (MENCKENS’ PREJUDICES SERIES) – H.L. Mencken
Iconoclast H. L. Mencken was unquestionably the most provocative and influential journalist and cultural critic in twentieth-century America. His volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a scathing yet humorous attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of… Read more …
-
PREJUDICES: Second series (MENCKENS’ PREJUDICES SERIES) – H.L. Mencken
Iconoclast H. L. Mencken was unquestionably the most provocative and influential journalist and cultural critic in twentieth-century America. His volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a scathing yet humorous attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of… Read more …
-
PREJUDICES: Third series (MENCKENS’ PREJUDICES SERIES) – H.L. Mencken
Iconoclast H. L. Mencken was unquestionably the most provocative and influential journalist and cultural critic in twentieth-century America. His volumes of Prejudices, published between 1919 and 1927, were both a scathing yet humorous attack on what Mencken saw as American provincialism and hypocrisy and a resounding defense of the writers and thinkers he thought of… Read more …
-
DRUGGING A NATION The story of China and the opium curse – Samuel Merwin
This is an account of the opium-smoking trend that spread throughout China in the early 1900s and gives staggering insights in a chapter in the history books that has conveniently been forgotten. Published in 1908, this microhistory takes you back to the horrors of hard-drugs and its impact on 1900s China. The dope-peddling Crown of… Read more …
-
FOLK-LORE VILLAIN The History of Gilles de Rais – Thomas Wilson LL.D.
“… in search for the Elixir of Youth, convinced that the foundation of this elixir should be the blood of infants or maidens” Even if there had been nothing else unusual about the Breton nobleman Gilles de Rais (1404–1440), his outstanding career as a soldier in the Hundred Years’ War and as a comrade in… Read more …
-
HANGMAN My experiences as an Executioner – James Berry, H. Snowden Ward
You have in your hands the memoir of James Berry (1852–1913), the first truly literate hangman, and the first to write about his position. Mr. Berry’s occupation was not by any means taken up from a love of the ghastly, or any pleasure in the work. Even in his business as executioner his soft-heartedness has… Read more …