Call him Baron von Crazy Pants. Baron Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg (1885–1921) was a Czarist leader in Siberia and Mongolia during the Bolshevik revolution. A fascinating but cruel character, he cut a path of violence, pillage, torture and mayhem across this forgotten region's history.

He was an Estonian nobleman of German descent and servant of the Russian Empire, and a descendant of Baltic pirates (one of his ancestors lit false beacons on the family island north of Estonia to lure in ships, kill their crews and steal their cargo) who opted for a military career in the Czar's cavalry. In this he floundered until the revolution, when he saw his opportunity to become the warrior-hero he always imagined himself to be.

In the Transbaikal and later in Mongolia, he set about carving out a kingdom of his own. Wildly antisemitic, he went about killing just about everyone who he thought opposed him, especially Jews and, for a short time, became the de facto ruler of Mongolia.

This is one of those off-the-wall histories of forgotten peoples and places, of madness and megalomania that takes you into forgotten realms and terrifying places. Along the way you learn all kinds of histories and not-so-fun facts -- like the fact that the swastika, at once an ancient Buddhist and Teutonic rune, had become an antisemitic symbol long before the Nazis ever adopted it. It's a fascinating, chilling read.