McLynn provides the first comprehensive view of crime and its consequences in the eighteenth century: why was England notorious for violence? Why did the death penalty prove no deterrent? Was it a crude means of redistributing wealth?

Recounting the decade of bloody events that followed the eruption of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Villa and Zapata explores the regional, international, cultural, racial, and economic strife that made the rebels Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Emiliano Zapata legends. Throughout this volume drama colludes with history, in a tale of two social outlaws who became legendary national heroes, yet--despite their triumph and only meeting, in 1914, in the Mexican capital--failed to make common cause and ultimately fell victim to intrigues more treacherous than their own. 16 pages of black-and-white...

In what The Washington Post has called fascinating, Frank McLynn has penned a year-by-year account of the pioneering efforts to conquer and settle the American West. Wagons West is a stirring history of the years from 1840 to 1849--the years between the era of the fur trappers and the beginning of the gold rush. In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by Midwestern farmers to Oregon and California in those years. Although they used mountain men as guides, they went almost literally into the unknown, braving dangers from hunger, thirst, disease, and drowning....