The Giant Book of Villains

by Schott Ian And Others (Editor), Damon Wilson (Editor), Rowan Wilson (Editor)

Completely revised in a new B format paperback, Graham Harvey provides a concise, practical guide on how food can be grown in truly nutritious ways, the crucial importance of minerals in the soil and how to tell what's good and what isn't. Harvey explains not only why our food is in such a parlous state but how we can change what we eat and radically improve our health. This edition also contains: a comprehensive listings of outlets where readers can find the best foods; advice on 'How to give up the supermarket habit'; sections headed 'Which Foods to Buy' that help the reader to make the choice of which food is real food full of nutrients and which isn't; and, a new chapter on bio-fuels - attacking it the concept as a disastrous example of the agricultural industry's addiction to subsidies.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, History

474 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Emilie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love this book because it's really entertaining, but doesn't require your undivided attention. the stories on said "bad guys" can range from 1-20+ pages, depending on the evilness, effect on society, reign, etc... the book starts off with ancient rome and ends with russian gangsters of today. it covers obvious baddies like adolf hitler and jeffrey dahmer and lesser knowns like papa doc and andrei chikatilo (who's actions made me nauseous). it's a lot gorier and disturbing than i thought it'd be. i skipped the whole section of wild west bad guys because i found it to be severely boring.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked it. just a short history on some bad guys in history, from roman emporors to italian gangsters and dicators. i like history so i enjoyed this

[Katt Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one. It wasn't what I was expecting. At first I was a bit disappointed. I saw the Bonnie and Clyde pic on the cover and thought it would be about a lot of American gangsters from the 20's on... but the very first chapter was about Roman dictators. Once I started reading though, I did get into it and liked it. The serial killer section got to me a bit due to it being quite graphic or maybe it was that the authors had chosen the sickest of all the serial killers to write about. Another thing that I found interesting was that it was about "bad guys" all over the world, not just America. Overall it was a great book and I learned quite a bit.

[Miss_otis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Take this review with a huge grain of salt - it simply wasn't what I was looking for.

From the photo of Bonnie & Clyde on the cover, I was expecting more of an overview on early 1900s - Prohibition era gangsters, and instead it's got a whole section on serial killers (which I can't take at all), chapters on Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein. If you like all those topics, you may like this book. As it is, it's very much not my cup of tea. And seriously, if you want to read about Hilter, Stalin, and Hussein, there are scores and scores of in-depth books for that.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was really four books in one - containing sections on dictators, serial killers, robberies and gangsters. I found the chapters on serial killers to be well-written and well chosen as examples in order to allow the author(s) to provide sufficient detail without resorting to sensationalism, and I thought the chapters on dictators to be interesting too - stuff about Caligula and Papa Doc particularly illustrative of madness at the top. The latter chapters on robberies and gangsters failed to hold my attention or keep my interest, and seemed slightly incongruous.