Download or read book The Strange Case of Hellish Nell written by Nina Shandler and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 23, 1944, as the allied forces prepared for D-Day, Britain's most famous psychic, Helen Duncan-“Nell” to her family-stood in the dock of Britain's highest criminal court accused of...witchcraft. It was a trial so bizarre Winston Churchill grumbled, “Why all this tomfoolery?” But the Prime Minister was not privy to the Military Intelligence agenda fueling the prosecution: Duncan's séances were accurately revealing top-secret British ship movements. The authorities wanted “Hellish Nell” silenced. Using diaries, personal papers, interviews, and declassified documents, Nina Shandler resurrects this strange courtroom episode and the shadowy world of wartime secrets and psychics. Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, The Strange Case of Hellish Nell is a true crime tale laced with supernatural phenomena and wartime intrigue.
Download or read book Hellish Nell written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story. Helen Duncan - known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for her uncontainable nature - was one of the most popular mediums of the twentieth century, holding seances around the country where she was believed to manifest the spirits of the dead. What happens when we die? It was the question of the age for a generation which had endured one world war and now was living through another. Mrs Duncan's seances offered an answer. But when she started foretelling naval disasters, she also attracted the unwelcome attention of the secret service. And so just weeks before the Normandy landings, absurdly, anachronistically, she was prosecuted for witchcraft and jailed. Was Nell a conjurer, a martyr or a security risk? Hellish Nell was first published in 2001 to widespread acclaim. It remains in this revised edition a fascinating window into the unsettled spiritual and psychological mood of the times: a sensational tale of spectacle, credulity and cruelty, and of Britain's last witch.
Download or read book Opium written by John H. Halpern and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a psychiatrist on the frontlines of addiction medicine and an expert on the history of drug use comes the "authoritative, engaging, and accessible" history of the flower that helped to build (Booklist) -- and now threatens -- modern society. Opioid addiction is fast becoming the most deadly crisis in American history. In 2018, it claimed nearly fifty thousand lives -- more than gunshots and car crashes combined, and almost as many Americans as were killed in the entire Vietnam War. But even as the overdose crisis ravages our nation -- straining our prison system, dividing families, and defying virtually every legislative solution to treat it -- few understand how it came to be. Opium tells the "fascinating" (Lit Hub) and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an epidemic of addiction. Throughout, Dr. John Halpern and David Blistein reveal the fascinating role that opium has played in building our modern world, from trade networks to medical protocols to drug enforcement policies. Most importantly, they disentangle how crucial misjudgments, patterns of greed, and racial stereotypes served to transform one of nature's most effective painkillers into a source of unspeakable pain -- and how, using the insights of history, state-of-the-art science, and a compassionate approach to the illness of addiction, we can overcome today's overdose epidemic. This urgent and masterfully woven narrative tells an epic story of how one beautiful flower became the fascination of leaders, tycoons, and nations through the centuries and in their hands exposed the fragility of our civilization. An NPR Best Book of the Year"A landmark project." -- Dr. Andrew Weil"Engrossing and highly readable." -- Sam Quinones"An astonishing journey through time and space." -- Julie Holland, MD"The most important, provocative, and challenging book I've read in a long time." -- Laurence Bergreen
Download or read book Witchcraft A Very Short Introduction written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the history and origins of witchcraft, from pre-history to the present day, considering why it still features so heavily in our culture
Download or read book The Ruin of All Witches written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. “The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
Download or read book Witchfinders written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-31 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By spring 1645, two years of civil war had exacted a dreadful toll upon England. People lived in terror as disease and poverty spread, and the nation grew ever more politically divided. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to drive out the presumed evil in their midst. Touring Suffolk and East Anglia on horseback, they detected demons and idolators everywhere. Through torture, they extracted from terrified prisoners confessions of consorting with Satan and demonic spirits. Acclaimed historian Malcolm Gaskill retells the chilling story of the most savage witch-hunt in English history. By the autumn of 1647 at least 250 people--mostly women--had been captured, interrogated, and hauled before the courts. More than a hundred were hanged, causing Hopkins to be dubbed "Witchfinder General" by critics and admirers alike. Though their campaign was never legally sanctioned, they garnered the popular support of local gentry, clergy, and villagers. While Witchfinders tells of a unique and tragic historical moment fueled by religious fervor, today it serves as a reminder of the power of fear and fanaticism to fuel ordinary people's willingness to demonize others.
Download or read book Pandemonium written by Warren Fahy and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ruthless Russian tycoon lures biologists Nell and Geoffrey to his underground metropolis, where they are confronted by a vicious menagerie of biological horrors that are rising up to consume the world.
Download or read book Hellish Nell written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1735 Witchcraft Act, charging that spirits of the dead had been raised by conjuration, was used for the last time in Portsmouth in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a plump Scotswoman, convicted as a fraud yet believed by hundreds to possess the power to speak to the dead. This is her extraordinary story, and of religion and superstition in Britain in the first half of the 20th century.
Download or read book Between Two Worlds written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1600s, over 350,000 intrepid English men, women, and children migrated to America, leaving behind their homeland for an uncertain future. Whether they settled in Jamestown, Salem, or Barbados, these migrants -- entrepreneurs, soldiers, and pilgrims alike -- faced one incontrovertible truth: England was a very, very long way away. In Between Two Worlds, celebrated historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill brilliantly illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to recreate the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But they were thwarted at every turn by the perils of a strange continent, unaided by monarchs who first ignored then exploited them. As these colonists strove to leave their mark on the New World, they were forced -- by hardship and hunger, by illness and infighting, and by bloody and desperate battles with Indians -- to innovate and adapt or perish. As later generations acclimated to the wilderness, they recognized that they had evolved into something distinct: no longer just the English in America, they were perhaps not even English at all. These men and women were among the first white Americans, and certainly the most prolific. And as Gaskill shows, in learning to live in an unforgiving world, they had begun a long and fateful journey toward rebellion and, finally, independence
Download or read book Which Country Has the World s Best Health Care written by Ezekiel J. Emanuel and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The preeminent doctor and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel is repeatedly asked one question: Which country has the best healthcare? He set off to find an answer. The US spends more than any other nation, nearly $4 trillion, on healthcare. Yet, for all that expense, the US is not ranked #1 -- not even close. In Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare? Ezekiel Emanuel profiles eleven of the world's healthcare systems in pursuit of the best or at least where excellence can be found. Using a unique comparative structure, the book allows healthcare professionals, patients, and policymakers alike to know which systems perform well, and why, and which face endemic problems. From Taiwan to Germany, Australia to Switzerland, the most inventive healthcare providers tackle a global set of challenges -- in pursuit of the best healthcare in the world.
Download or read book The Anatomical Venus written by Helen Ivory and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Victorian and the Romantic written by Nell Stevens and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History meets memoir in two irresistible true-life romances--one set in 19th century Rome, one in present-day Paris and London--linked by a bond between women writers a hundred years apart. In 2013, graduate student Nell Stevens toils away on a dissertation about artistic and literary circles in nineteenth-century Rome. Bored with academia and thrown off after falling for a soulful American screenwriter living in Paris, she finds herself drawn to the biography of English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell who, in 1857, left her dull minister husband behind in England and set off with her daughters on a transformative trip to Rome. There she met a dazzling group of artists and writers, including the American critic Charles Eliot Norton. Seventeen years her junior, Norton was Gaskell's one true love. They could not be together--the affair would have been an unthinkable breach. But by his side in Rome, Mrs. Gaskell knew she had reached the "tip-top point" of her life. Could this indomitable Victorian author help modern-day Nell salvage her foundering pursuit of love, family and a writing career? History meets memoir in this vibrant, witty, and hugely original literary chronicle of two women, each charting a way of life beyond the rules of her time.
Download or read book Mantel Pieces Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books written by Hilary Mantel and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning collection of essays and memoir from twice Booker Prize winner and international bestseller Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light
Download or read book A Single Man written by Christopher Isherwood and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life. A Single Man follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours. Behind his British reserve, tides of grief, rage, and loneliness surge—but what is revealed is a man who loves being alive despite all the everyday injustices. When Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man first appeared, it shocked many with its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in maturity. Isherwood's favorite of his own novels, it now stands as a classic lyric meditation on life as an outsider.
Download or read book Stalking Irish Madness written by Patrick Tracey and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book A History of Magic Witchcraft and the Occult written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 898 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the beguiling history of witchcraft, magic, and superstition through the centuries in this stunningly illustrated title. A History of Magic, Witchcraft and the Occult charts the extraordinary narrative of one of the most interesting and often controversial subjects in the world, covering everything from ancient animal worship and shamanism, through alchemy and divination to modern Wicca and the resurgence of the occult in 21st-century literature, cinema, and television. Providing readers with a comprehensive account of everything from Japanese folklore and Indian witchcraft to the differences between black and white magic, and dispelling myths such as those surrounding the voodoo doll and Ouija, the book explores the common human fascination with spells, superstition, and the supernatural. This riveting read on witchcraft further includes: - Engaging text and lavish illustrations with over 500 full-color images that bring the subject to life. - Special features on aspects of magic, such as oracle bones of ancient China, the Knights Templar, and magic at the movies, and “plants and potions”, such as mandrake and belladonna examine topics in great detail. - Quick-fact panels explore magic origins, key figures, key deities, uses in spells, structures of religions, and more. The perfect introduction to magic and the occult, it explores forms of divination from astrology and palmistry to the Tarot and runestones and offers key insights into the ways in which magic has interacted with religion. The most comprehensive illustrated history of witchcraft available, A History of Magic, Witchcraft and the Occult will enthral and fascinate anyone interested in spiritualism and the occult.
Download or read book A Double Life written by Flynn Berry and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling, Edgar-Award winning author of Under the Harrow and Northern Spy, a "breathtaking" (The New York Times Book Review) page-turner inspired by a shocking true crime A better person would forgive him. A different sort of better person would have found him years ago. Nearly thirty years ago, while Claire and her brother slept upstairs, a brutal crime was committed in their grand London home. The next morning, her father's car was found abandoned, with bloodstains on the front seat. The first lord accused of murder in more than a century, he has been missing ever since. Now a doctor living under an assumed name, Claire learns the police may have found him, and her carefully calibrated existence begins to fracture. She starts to infiltrate his privileged inner circle, who have never broken their silence about what happened that night. Soon, Claire will learn how far she'll go to finally find the truth. Named a Must-Read by Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, O Magazine, BBC, CrimeReads, and PureWow
