Known world-wide as the painter of the Mona Lisa, for designs of flying machines and for his studies of the human body. He brought his scientific and artistic abilities together so successfully that he is as famous now, five hundred years after his death, as in his lifetime.
It was a very inconvenient time for murder. Florence was full of Christmas shoppers and half the police force was already on holiday. At first it seemed quite an ordinary murder. Of course, there are always a few mysteries. In this case, the dead man had been in the habit of moving his furniture at three o'clock in the morning. Naturally, the police wanted to know why. The case became more complicated.
Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men - who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback - is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.
Though he left no written works Socrates was the first great philosopher of the West. His conversations and dramatic death in ancient Athens were recorded by a number of writers (including Plato); they show that Socrates was deeply interested in self-knowledge and virtue. Socrates also believed in the rule of law even refusing to flee when he was condemned to death. His ceaseless questionings have set timeless standards for the relentless pursuit of truth.
People are fascinated by murder. The popularity of murder mystery books, TV series, and even board games shows that there is an appetite for death, and the more unusual or macabre the method, the better. With gunshots or stabbings the cause of death is obvious, but poisons are inherently more mysterious. How are some compounds so deadly in such tiny amounts? Agatha Christie used poison to kill her characters more often than any other crime fiction writer. The poison was a central part of the novel, and her choice of deadly substances was far from random; the chemical and physiological characteristics of each poison provide vital clues to the discovery of the murderer.