Assassins and Assassinations: History's Most Infamous Plots

by Paul Donnelley

A fascinating exploration of 25 of history's most celebrated assassination plots, from Julius Caesar to Benazir Bhutto.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Aged 15, I wrote a quiz for the late Jeremy Beadle on the London radio station LBC. Two years later, I was the biggest outside contributor to the best-selling Hunter Davies's Bigger Book of British Lists.

My own first book - 50 Fantastic Hits - was published when I was 24. I have since written more than 20 books, often with a showbusiness theme. I am the author of biographies of Julia Roberts (2003) and Judy Garland (2007); a history of television scandal (TV Babylon in 1997); four editions of a best-selling encyclopaedia of film stars Fade to Black (2000, 2003, 2005, 2010); a guide to the films of Marilyn Monroe (2000); Essex Murders (2007), a book about homicide in that county for which I also took many of the photographs; Assassins and Assassinations (2008), a look at 25 of the most notorious plots; The Arsenal Companion (2008), 501 Most Notorious Crimes (2009); Arsenal Day-By-Day (2009); Cricket Day-By-Day (2009) and Firsts, Lasts & Onlys Football, Firsts, Lasts & Onlys Cricket and Firsts, Lasts & Onlys Golf.

Firsts, Lasts & Onlys is a registered trademark of Paul Donnelley.

I have contributed to the following books: Hunter Davies's Bigger Book of British Lists (1982); Poison Pen The Unauthorised Biography of Kitty Kelley by George Carpozi Jr (1992); Clinton Confidential The Climb To Power - The Unauthorised Biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton by George Carpozi Jr (1995); Tom Jones: Close Up by Lucy Ellis and Bryony Sutherland (2000); The Pocket Essential Marx Brothers by Mark Bego (2001) and White Slave: The Autobiography by Marco Pierre White and James Steen (2006).

In the mid-1980s I wrote many of the questions for the television quiz show Pass the Buck (hosted by George Layton for Thames Television). I also wrote a number of unbroadcast shows - you could say I have been involved with more pilots than a kamikaze squadron. Of the shows that did make the air, I wrote for Jeremy Beadle's Today's the Day (TV-am), Today's the Day (BBC), Ultra Quiz (TVS) and University Challenge (Granada for BBC).

I was the editor of Crime Stories, Man About Town and M-Zone. I have worked for several magazines and newspapers including The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, Daily Mail (where for two years I was stand-in editor on the gossip column Wicked Whispers), OK! (where I was a columnist for three years), Sunday Express, Punch (where I was a reporter-feature writer and occasional stand-in deputy editor), Idols, Maxim, For Women, Video World, Hotel & Caterer, City AM (where I was the chief sub editor), thelondonpaper and, most recently Master Detective where I write "Paul Donnelley's Murder Month", a column on criminal history.

I am a member of the National Union of Journalists and the Society of Authors

I live in a book-lined flat in Essex and am presently at work on a number of non-fiction books.

Reviews

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The value of the book is not quite high, as the author passes from one murder to another and has no time and space for going into many details.
But these kind of works awake your desire to read more about the subject, so I go for four stars instead of only three.

[Stela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Asasini și asasinate care au schimbat istoria lumii e un talmeș-balmeș de povești despre tot felul de crime care pot fi găsite cu ușurință și pe net. Nu există nici o interpretare a evenimentelor, nici o analiză a relației cauză – efect în ciuda promisiunii din titlu, nici o organizare structurală, gangsteri și peronalități politice apărînd împreună (deși, dacă stau să mă gîndesc mai bine, poate autorul a vrut să ne transmită un mesaj cu acest amestec), prezentările sînt uneori confuze și adesea incomplete.

Dar dacă vă aflați într-o seară la un pahar de vorbă cu prietenii și sînteți în criză de subiecte senzaționale, cărticica asta vă va scoate onorabil din impas, dat fiind că principiul ei compozițional de bază este „știați că”. Iată cîteva dintre informațiile pe care nu le știam sau le uitasem:

• termenul asasin vine de la un grup de ucigași perși și sirieni din secolul al VIII-lea numiți hashshashin („utilizatori de hașiș”), deși nu există dovezi că ar fi folosit acest drog;

• papa Ioan Paul al II-lea a fost primul papă ne-italian, (a fost polonez și se numea Karol Józef Wojtyla);

• Ronald Reagan habar n-avea cine-i Valery Giscard d’Estaing și credea că banii cheltuiți cu forțele armate nu se adăugau la deficitul național. Cum era și firesc, deci, bărbatul care a atentat la viața lui nu era motivat politic, ci sentimental: voia s-o impresioneze pe Jodi Foster, de care se îndrăgostise lulea;

• există un factor zero care ar explica soarta tragică a unor președinți americani asasinați: se spune că William Henry Harrison, pe atunci guvernatorul statului Indiana nu a vrut să anuleze Tratatul de la Fort Wayne din 1809 prin care se cumpăraseră 250 000 de acri de la indieni în ciuda împotrivirii indigenului care și-a dat mai apoi viața pentru pămîntul său. „Potrivit legendei, Tecumseh l-ar fi blestemat pe Harrison, ca el și următori președinți aleși în ani care se termină cu cifra zero să moară în timpul administrației.”;

• Guinness book a fost fondată în 1954 de doi frați gemeni, Ross și Norris McWhirter în urma unei discuții cu directorul fabricii de bere Guinness care, după ce a ratat o pasăre la vînătoare, a vrut să știe care e cea mai rapidă pasăre vînată și nu a găsit informația în nici una dintre enciclopediile sale. El le-a cerut să redacteze o carte cu acest fel de curiozități. „Au primit slujba de îndată ce Norris a menționat că turca era limba cu cele mai puține verbe neregulate – numai unul, imek, „a fi” (limba engleză conține în jur de 180 de verbe neregulate.) Gemenii s-au pus pe treabă și, pe 27 august 1955, un volum subțire, de 198 de pagini, intitulat The Guinness Book of Records (Cartea Recordurilor), a apărut pe piață. Costa 5 șilingi.”

Mă opresc aici. Dacă sunteți interesați de genul ăsta de informații, citiți cartea, că mai găsiți. 😊

[Kara Babcock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m working my way through Assassin’s Creed III now. It’s slow going because I don’t devote a lot of my free time to it (I have to read, after all). I’ve been playing this series since the first game, and next to Mass Effect, it’s one of my favourite games. It combines stealth, combat, and storytelling to very good effect. The first game was very repetitive, but Assassin’s Creed II and its two sequels elevated the game to a different level. Assassinating people has never been more fun.

I wanted to learn more about real assassinations through history. Rather than read a book about a single famous assassination, I was looking for something that would survey several assassinations and comment upon them. So a book called Assassins and Assassinations sounded like exactly what I wanted. Indeed, Paul Donnelley delivers exactly that. However, this might be a case where what I wished for isn’t actually what I wanted.

Donnelley writes each chapter like a newspaper article. It’s full of dry facts, parenthetical commentary on people’s dates of birth, and details and minutiae. Each sentence is packed full of the maximum amount of information it can bear without breaking. Seldom does Donnelley devote space to a lighter tone; almost everything is factual. Similarly, he injects little of his own opinion or asides into this flow of information.

There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, some people might prefer it. I’m just not one of them. When I read non-fiction, I like my authors to let their personality shine through their words (the exception, of course, would be purely academic literature, but that isn’t the case here). I can’t help but feel that if Bill Bryson wrote a book about famous assassinations, it would be twice this thick and include several anecdotes about his time in the Appalachians. And I’d give it five stars and buy copies for all my friends.

Tone aside, I can’t fault the comprehensive and detailed nature of Assassins and Assassinations. Donnelley has compiled an extensive selection of assassination plots, from Julius Caesar to the attempts on Hitler’s life and, naturally, the assassinations of such presidents as Lincoln and Kennedy. This is one informative, sometimes interesting book. It’s short enough that it isn’t a slog, especially if you don’t try to consume it too quickly. Rather than ploughing through it, I took it a few assassinations a night.

So if you’re looking, like I was, for a book about assassinations, you can’t really go wrong here. It doesn’t have the flair that I look for in my non-fiction; that might not be as big a deal for you. At the end of the day, Donnelley traces the combination of plots and chance that take people’s lives, start wars, and end eras. So many key moments in history involved an assassination of some kind, and many more assassinations remain heavy in our minds because of the people involved or the aftermath they caused. Assassins and Assassinations recounts all the details with a stark, no-nonsense approach.

[Alex Reborn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I started reading this book from the wrong premise. It is, indeed, a book about assassinations and famous people, but I was hoping on reading about the subject from a different angle. The author presented here a different person in each chapter and he chose to focus on the events and dates, rather than on the "changing the world part". Sometimes I do wonder what would the world look like if...? But I did not find such answer here. The back of the book promised a detailed presentation of the events, which I did find, but it lacked the details of the consequences on the world. It only contained the events following the violent acts, such as what happened next with the people involved. I wanted to know the author's opinion on how these killings changed the world and what the world would have been expected to look like if things were different. Although, that book would be of a completely different length.

[Socrate · Rating 4 out of 5]

„De mii de ani, omenirea a încercat să-şi rezolve problemele politice prin intermediul asasinatelor. Uciderea duşmanului era văzută – şi în unele ţări încă mai este – ca o modalitate acceptabilă de a răsturna guverne. Nu-ţi place conducătorul?
Impuşcă-l. Aruncă-l în aer. Înjunghie-l. Otrăveşte-l. Metodele de a ucide sunt aproape nelimitate.”