This book is full of sadistic, psychotic killers, most of whom were unfortunately leaders of a country or some how important in society. There are 16 truly evil people in this book. Many of them are depraved, sick sociopaths whose number of killings reach the thousands and even millions. While reading about their evil deeds and their insane thoughts, I was thoroughly disgusted. Many of the leader of the countries had political ideas that were so stupid I couldn't believe that people actually followed them. Its hard to believe that psychos like these people existed and unfortunately still exist today. While the people disgusted me, I still liked the book. After all, even the author writes in her introduction, that evil is fascinating.

People in this book are
1. Caligula~ "The Schizophrenic Emperor"
2. Nero ~"Fifth Emperor of Rome"
3. Attila the Hun~ "The Storm from the East"
4. King John~ "A callous, Cold Hearted Monarch"
5. Torquemada~ "The Spanish Inquisitor"
6. Prince Vlad Dracula~ "The Impaler"
7. Francisco Pizzaro~ "Conqueror of the Incas"
8. Bloody Mary 1~ "A Catholic Queen in a Protestant Country"
9. Ivan IV, The Terrible~ "Tsar of all Russias
10. Elizabeth, Countess Bathory~ "Countess Dracula"
11. Rasputin~ "The Mad Monk who brought down a Dynasty"
12. Josef Stalin~ "A Twentieth Century Tyrant"
13. Adolf Hitler~ "The Father of the Final Solution"
14. Ilse Kock~ "The Bitch of Buchenwald"
15. Pol Pot~ "Architect of Genocide"
16. Idi Amin~ "The Butcher of East Africa"

This review is also posted on The Book Owl Extraordinaire
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This was an interesting book, the title pretty much sums it up. Basic run-downs of a handful of "most evil" folks from history. The choices were a bit subjective, and there wasn't tons of detail, but it provided a pretty accurate glimpse of a bunch of figures. Some of them I didn't really know anything about, so it did make me a little curious to learn more about them, since these were supposedly the "most evil" and all. ( )

subjective but still interesting ( )

subjective but still interesting ( )

A very fascinating read. Some of the editing was a bit shoddy ("they released their horses go and hid wagon wheels") in several places, but overall the voice of the piece was rather masterful.

The choice to include Bloody Mary didn't seem deserved from the book's standpoint; she's surrounded by people in the book whom had other's skinned alive, drawn and quartered, bled out, etc. yet her atrocities aren't really elaborated on. The extent of her "evilness" seems to be a (very minor) religious and political purging which, as is my understanding, was par for the course during that time. I would have preferred some more blatantly psychopathic and despicable people such as Mengele, Himmler or Ghengis Khan. ( )