Assassinated!: Assassinations That Shook the World: from Julius Caesar to JFK

by Steven Parissien

Book by Parissien, Steven

Genres: History, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Dr Steven Parissien is an internationally-renowned author who has written extensively on architectural and cultural history. He is the director of Compton Verney museum and gallery in Warwickshire.

Reviews

[Lorenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best coffee table books i have ever read. There are a lot of historical people whom I would never have known were it not for this book. Everyone knows the assassination of Julius Caesar, Franz Ferdinand, JFK, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln. But not everyone knew the circumstances surrounding the death of Prime Minister Canalejas, Chancellor Dollfuss, President Verwoerd and UN Mediator Bernadotte. I bet that most people would not even know the last four people I mentioned. This is why i appreciate this book so much. I really like the fact that the author did not focus only on who or how the assassination took place. I like how he would give historical backgrounds of the assassinated person as well as the period they live in. I also appreciate how the author discussed the effects of the assassination on the course of history, such as how the assassination of King Faisal II would affect Iraqi history or how the assassination of Lord Moyne affected the partition of Palestine. I highly recommend this book.

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historian Steven Parissien starts off with a solid concept: do three or four pages on each of several historically important assassinations. Unfortunately, the book falls flat in the execution. The information is reasonably well balanced – not too much and not too little – making it an entertaining bathroom read. And I won’t fault the author for presenting some theories with which I don’t happen to agree. But sometimes he presents genuinely inaccurate information; for example, his entry on the Martin Luther King assassination is particularly plagued with embarrassing errors. Further, the whole thing could have done with a good editing. Some of the sections promised by the cover are not included in the text. Parissien also seems intent on assassinating – or at least badly wounding – English grammar. The result is an entertaining find on the bargain rack at Borders but honestly not much else.

[Deborah Makarios · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative approach, spending more time on the context and ramifications of each assassination than the actual gory details.

[Brent · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting short book of 50 of the most notorious assassinations that changed history as we know it. From Leon Trotsky to Julius Caesar, each person has a brief historical overview, and has the assassination story along with a chronological timeline on the side. An interesting read in leisure time, or a coffee-table book as well.

Brent M. McCulley (10/17/13)

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in one sitting at my college library, I was not particularly interested in the history of people who have died at the hands of assassins, but it was a neat. Unless I had an assignment for this kind of subject, I probably wouldn't read it again.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting facts

[Michael Ombu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr Steven Parissien is a British historian and his works have covered architecture and social history. In this book he chronicles assassinations that have rocked the world from the multiple stabbing of Julius Caesar on the steps of the senate in Rome on the 15th of March 44BC to the bombing and shooting Benazir Bhutto’s convoy on 27th December 2007 in Pakistan. In between there is Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Emperor Caligula, Kings Gustav III, Henry III, Henry IV, Faisal II, Russian Tsars, American Presidents Kennedy, Lincoln, Garfield and Mckinley. In all there are 47 assassinations described here. A brief history of the victim and the assassin (where it is known) is given. The date place and reason for the assassination is also stated. Finally, the consequence of the assassination is outlined. He brings to life two millennia of violent history with such graphical simplicity. This is one of the best history lessons you will ever have.
Some notable murders contained in ASSASSINS: Assassinations that shook the world - From Julius Caesar to JFK are;
Name: Julius Caesar 100 – 44BC
Assassin: Brutus, Cassius and other Senators
Place and Date: Rome 15th March 44BC
Reason: Fear of his growing power
Effect: Rome fought a global civil war as forces of Octavian and Mark Anthony clashed. Octavian triumphed and eventually became grander than Caesar. Rome lost its Republican status for ever.

Name: Emperor Caligula AD12 - 41
Assassin: Praetorian Guard led by Cassius Chaerea
Date and Place: Rome 24th January AD41
Reason: His increasingly deranged behaviour including incest, replacing the heads of gods in the temples with his own bust, making soldiers pick sea shells to show he had conquered Neptune the sea god, making Senators run alongside his chariot, opening a brothel in his palace and populating it with wives of Senators who were required to perform while their husbands watched.
Effect: After his death Rome’s rule extended to Thrace, Judea, Mauretania, and Britain.

Name: Conrad of Montferrat
Assassin: 2 members of the Assassins sect
Place and Date: Jerusalem 28th April 1192
Reason: They wanted to purge Muslim lands of Sunni and Christian leaders.
Effect: They killed the most powerful crusade general and newly elected King of Jerusalem thereby greatly demoralising the crusading forces.

Name: William I, of Orange
Assassin: Balthasar Gerard
Place and Date: Delft, Netherlands 10th July 1584
Reason: To eradicate a Protestant King from Catholic lands (Netherlands was part of Spain)
Effect: His death united the people of Netherlands and Zeeland even more and they got their independence from Spanish rule.

Name: Abraham Lincoln 1809 - 1865
Assassin: John Wilkes Booth
Place and Date: Washington DC, USA 14th April 1865
Reason: His emancipation of slaves and to avenge the South for its military loss
Effect: His body was the first of American Presidents to lie in state, thousands lined the street to pay respects as he was transported by rail back to Illinois. Lincoln would have made an excellent peacetime president but we will never know what his next step would have been.

Name: Tsar Alexander II 1818 - 1881
Assassin: Ignacy Hryniewiecki
Place and Date: St Petersburg, Russia 13th March 1881
Reason: To avenge Russia’s iron rule on Poland
Effect: Almost all his liberal reforms were discarded including his plan for a genuinely representative assembly completed a night before his death. This assembly was shelved 3 decades and finally convened in 1917 but by then it was already too late.

Name: Grigory Novykh aka Rasputin 1860’s - 1916
Assassin: Prince Felix Yusupov and others
Place and Date: St Petersburg Russia 29/30 December 1916
Reason: His strong influence and increasing control of the royal family
Effect: A month after his death revolution broke out ending in the execution of the royal family, the end of the Romanov dynasty and the birth of the Soviet communist state.

Name: Leon Trosky 1879 - 1940
Assassin: Ramon Mercader
Place and Date: Mexico City 20th August 1940
Reason: One of the countless people within and outside Russia killed for opposing Stalin
Effect: His works are very popular and his grave is in his house in Mexico which is still a museum. He has never been rehabilitated by the Russian state but his killer was awarded the highest honour in the Soviet Union.

Name: Reinhard Heydrich
Assassin: Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik
Place and Date: Prague, Czech Republic 27th May 1942
Reason: Resistance effort against Nazi Germany
Effect: As retaliation the Waffen SS rounded up 340 people (including women and children) in the village of Lidice and systematically shot them. The entire village was burned to the ground and even corpses in the cemetery were exhumed and burned. 2 weeks later another village, Lezaky suffered the same fate as Lidice. In all 13,000 Czechs and Slovaks were arrested, imprisoned deported or killed as revenge for Heydrich’s death.

Name: Martin Luther King 1929 - 1968
Assassin: James Earl Ray or another
Place and Date: Memphis Tennessee 4th April 1968
Reason: Still inconclusive, FBI documents to be open for public viewing in 2027
Effect: 700 cities have streets named after King in the US alone, King County Washington changed its logo to the image of Martin Luther King’s face, on the 3rd Monday of every January America has a national holiday in honour of Martin Luther King.

Name: Alexander Litvinenko 1962 - 2006
Assassin: Unverified
Place and Date: London England 1st November 2006 died 23rd November
Reason:
Effect: several people linked to Litvinenko have disappeared, his grave is not to be disturbed for at least 22 years due to the high dosage of polonium in is body. No arrests have been made in his case.
Name: Archduke Franz Ferdinand 1863 -1914
Assassin: Gavrilo Princip
Place and Date: Sarajevo Bosnia-Herzegovina 28th June 1914
Reason: Serbian Nationalists seeking Independence from Austro-Hungarian Empire
Effect: The assassination led to the First World War, the bloodiest war seen to that date.
This book is a concise and brilliant chronicle of an aspect of earths violent history.
From somewhere out there,
Michael Ombu