“Fortunately, I never got VD. One of the girls did and I heard that she was taken away and beaten to death. The rest of us remained quite healthy. Given our hectic sex life. I don’t understand how we remained healthy. Maybe we were just a bunch of young country girls living off our youth.” There are said to have been 100,000 “comfort girls” recruited by the Japanese military during World War II, and set up in brothels throughout Asia. Today the surviving women once forced into prostitution by Japan’s “Imperial Forces” are in the process of suing the Japanese government for their years of degradation and abuse. JB

Publisher: Norton
Hardback: 303 pages
Illustrated

This is an encyclopedia of mankind’s greatest and most infamous demagogues. They’re all here, neatly arranged in alphabetical order, with a concise yet detailed summary of their lives. Some names most readers would not expect to see, such as Ikhenaton, while others have almost become household words. For people interested in history’s most infamous and powerful tyrants, this book will more than fit the bill as a valuable reference tool. JB

Publisher: Facts on File
Hardback: 340 pages
Illustrated

White supremacists Richard Butler and Robert Miles had a dream slightly different from Martin Luther King’s. A new Aryan state would be created, comprising the land now known as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Butler moved from California to Hayden Lake, Idaho, and built his Aryan Nations Compound. It conformed nicely with his vision: “A sign on the sentry box read “Whites Only.” The office walls sported pictures of Adolf Hitler, swastikas, and other Nazi memorabilia. A bust of Hitler’s head was kept inside a glass cabinet. In the chapel was another portrait of Hitler with a caption: “When I Come back, No More Mr. Nice Guy.” So there appears to now be a race as to who will appear first: Christ or Hitler. The book’s content is extremely comprehensive and offers interesting descriptions of most of the so-called right-wing fringe groups existing in America today. JB

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Hardback: 288 pages

Hoover had a file on anyone who was anyone. Hoover loved files. Hoover loved dirt… just like the vaccum cleaner which bears his name. After reading Secret Files you will readily see that the most startling secret kept from the public was Hoover’s own obsessions with sex, filth, race and orthodoxy:
“Informal Memo: In April, 1952, the New York Office received confidential information from a detective of the New York District Attorney’s Office to the effect that Adlai Stevenson and David B. Owen, President, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, were two officials in Illinois who caused a great deal of trouble to law-enforcement officers. The detective had gone to Peoria to bring back basketball players who had been indicted in New York. The basketball players told the detective that the two best-known homosexuals in Illinois were Owen and Stevenson. According to the report, Stevenson was ‘Adeline.’” JB

Publisher: Dee
Paperback: 377 pages

It was Ed Sullivan who once presented Castro to his American audience as the “George Washington of Cuba.” This book almost echoes that refrain, along with such tidbits as the following lyrics sung to “Jingle Bells” in Cuba:
With Fidel, with Fidel
Always with Fidel
Eating corn or malange
Always with Fidel
Whether this constant injesting of corn or malange has in any way contributed to Castro’s undoubted charisma is beside the point, which is that while maligned in the United States, Castro has held on to the reigns of power in his native country as Franco did in Spain. The author relates with startling clarity and many interesting historical sidelights how Castro has confounded his adversaries over and over again. Adversaries like Luis Somoza, who remarked before the Bay of Pigs expedition: “Bring me a couple of hairs from Castro’s beard.” JB

Publisher: Andrews and McMeel
Paperback: 458 pages
Illustrated

Original German text and translation, with an analysis that shows U.S. Gun Control laws have Nazi roots. Just when you thought you had heard everything… Here are the original Reichsgesetzblaetter, or Law Codes from 1932. (The Nazis did not ascend to power until 1933.) The authors heap text upon text in their attempts to persuade the reader. As a final argument, they print Sarah Brady’s picture right next to Adolf Hitler’s. Sure to be a tie breaker at any debating group. JB

Publisher: Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Paperback: 147 pages

Who else but Morris Dees would be worthy enough of writing the preface to this book, which analyzes scores of hate crimes throughout America. This book is packed with every conceivable tidbit of rancor imaginable. For instance, a quote from Louis Farrakhan: “Listen Jews, this little black boy is your last chance because the Scriptures charge you with killing the prophets of God… You cannot say ‘Never again’ to God, because when he puts you in the oven, ‘Never again’ don’t mean a thing.” Or how about the facts behind the “Temple of Love” in Miami? Their charismatic leader, Yahweh Ben Yahweh (God, Son of God, in Hebrew) preached that all whites were “serpents” and “demons.” As part of the initiation ceremony for joining the temple, devotees had to murder a “white devil.” But several victims were blacks who somehow challenged Yahweh’s commandments. In his sermons Yahweh told his followers, “All hypocrites must die.” Strange that he saw no irony in that directive. JB

Publisher: Plenum
Hardback: 287 pages

“Lack of vigilance has delivered the devils death to our door and we open before they knock and usher our enemies directly into our bodies, our minds, our souls… And the ancestors scream in anguish as we dance into death’s lap as if Greek fags in search of a screw, an orgy, a self-destructive demise in the stench of a genocidal anal odyssey… we spread our cultural legs as if we are cheap French whores and allow our enemies inside like pale flesh customers with diseased penises and a freaky appetite for deviance. This is why our culture suffers from a venereal disease, which creates madness, dysfunction and a yellow pus stream of blood-laced cowardice… In addition, the spread of AIDS using inoculations in Africa under the guise that smallpox eradication was the goal, polluted our Motherland as the dying littered the beautiful landscape.” JB

Publisher: A&B
Paperback: 172 pages
Illustrated

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot and killed, and the author of this book purports to know why. After 15 years of intensive research, including hundreds of interviews and the examination of 300,000 pages of declassified FBI and CIA documents, the author contends that it was the aforementioned agencies who bear the responsibility for Malcolm X’s death. The ubiquitous Hoover shows up everywhere as the master of puppets, a man who gloated over his victims, from John Dillinger to Malcolm X. Surprisingly, the author links the assassinations of both Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, to the same source: COINTELPRO. Indeed, Rockwell received the greatest ovation of his career at a Black Muslim Rally in Washington in 1961. It is a compelling irony that neither Malcolm nor Rockwell were killed by white or black racists, respectively. As dynamic and charismatic figures, they were too much alike, thus, they were both recognized by the powers that be as a great danger to the status quo. “Officially” both men were assassinated by disgruntled former associates. Succinctly put by the author of the book: “I am convinced that Louis E. Lomax, an industrious Afro-American journalist who befriended Malcolm in the late 1950s, had practically solved the riddle of his assassination 25 years ago. Lomax, who died in a mysterious automobile accident while shooting a film in Los Angeles about the assassination, believed that Malcolm X was betrayed by a former friend who reportedly had ties to the intelligence community. In 1968, Lomax called the suspect ‘Judas.’” However, if Lomax was right, and Malcolm was betrayed, it was not with a kiss, as the book graphically demonstrates. JB

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 405 pages
Illustrated

There have been a number of books written about the KGB, but this one is genuinely informative and loaded with rare photos as well. The book is remarkably well written, and the chapters on Stalin and the Cold War are unique and provocative. For those with an interest in the Rosenberg case, many new details have been provided by this well-informed author. Captivating and difficult to put down once you begin to sink your teeth into it, with intrigue, treachery, double-crosses and betrayals. JB

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Paperback: 776 pages
Illustrated