How to Kill: The Definitive History of the Assassin

Exploding telephones, pipe-guns and bullets made of teeth, aspirin explosives, cobra-venom darts, a rifle that shoots around corners, a 'piss bomb' (10 cups of boiled urine mixed with nitric acid), exploding clams, samurai swords, karate chops, poisoned umbrellas and a fuel-laden light aircraft. Sometimes even a regular gun. These are just some of the methods that have been used over the last fifty years to speed 4,000 VIPs to a premature end. How to Kill is not an encyclopaedia of assassination but rather a gripping history that charts the development of the modern world through the eyes of the assassins that tried to change it. It is also a work of investigation, surprising conspiracies and remarkable connections are uncovered throughout. This book is the first to study in detail not only the causes and surprising consequences of assassination, but also the crucial seconds of the act itself and the psychology of the assassin in an effort to understand why some assassinations succeed