“Seabrook dreamed of going to Arabia from the time he was a child in the 1880s. After college, he scraped his way across Europe and got as far as Naples, where he fell ill and was forced to return to the United States. It was not until years later, in the 1920s, that Seabrook fulfilled his dream. He traveled and lived among various desert tribes, producing this vivid account of their customs and beliefs.”

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 347 pages
Illustrated

Asbury’s informal chronicle of gang life in New York before the first World War is an eye-opener for anyone operating under the delusion that “those were the good old days.” Conditions in neighborhoods like Hell’s Kitchen and the Five Points put modern slums to shame. And they had gangs to match. Huge mobs of members of such hard-nosed organizations as the Dead Rabbits, the Plug Uglies and the Bowery Boys would stage pitched battles lasting for days. And when they decided to riot, the result was the Draft Riots, which were like all the riots of 1967 rolled into one week in 1863 Manhattan, only worse. There was even a police riot, when rival gangs of cops duked it out in front of City Hall. A wild book about wild times. JM

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 400 pages
Illustrated

Compiled by the author of Bloodletters and Bad Men, this illustrated tome retains all the flavor of the aforementioned book. Photographs of ghoulish and asocial types are interspersed throughout the text at appealing intervals. We can even find a rare photograph of Fritz Haarman, the “Ogre of Hannover” with relative ease, along with other infamous killers from every corner of the globe. JB

Publisher: Marlowe
Hardback: 693 pages
Illustrated

“Journalist, adventurer and raconteur Seabrook describes in detail rituals that involve soul transferring, necromancy and resurrection, and relates stories of sorcery and witchcraft gathered in various circles of Haitian society. As research for the book, the author went to live in the jungles of Haiti, where he stayed with the family of Maman Célie, a voodoo priestess who initiated him into the religion and taught him its rites. Incisive and vivid, The Magic Island is an unparalleled investigative account told with sensitivity and courage by a traveler of wide experience.” Originally published in 1929. Illustrated with both expressionistic drawing and photos by the author.

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 336 pages
Illustrated

“Lou Andreas-Salomé was not only immensely gifted as a writer, psychologist and observer of her twilight culture. She was the occasion and spur of genius in others. Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud and a host of important contemporaries were set alight or shadowed by her passage. Her memoirs touch the nerve of modernity. They are not at every point to be trusted. Which makes the game the more sparkling and strangely poignant.”—George Steiner

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 226 pages
Illustrated

Synchronicity was coined by Carl Jung to describe meaningful coincidences that conventional notions of time and causality cannot explain. Everyone has them, but no definitive explanation can be given to fully explain them. “The most common meaningful coincidences are those seemingly random but apparently purposeful events which speak to us directly in terms of personal meaning. Jung's investigation of coincidences that occurred in his own life and in the lives of others led him to conclude that they are related to unconscious psychological processes. Alan Combs and Mark Holland use a unique transdisciplinary approach that not only sheds light on this strange phenomena, but also provides a glimpse into the hidden pattern of nature.”
The authors believe that nothing occurs independent of any other thing and that nothing that does occur is entirely random and prey to chance. This is a theory that has been revisited and repeated through-out history. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields, networks of resonance that form webs of mutual influence beyond the usual limitations of space and time, is a return to the medieval notion that all things are connected. The book shows how modern science and ancient mythology are front and back of the same revolving door onto reality. The work of Jung and quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli is examined along with noted scientists Paul Kammerer, Werner Heisenberg, and David Boehm. The mystery is slowly unraveled to reveal these coincidences as phenomena that involve mind and matter, science and spirit, thus providing rational explanations for parapsychological events like telepathy, precognition, and intuition. This is an extremely interesting book that deals with a subject we are all familiar with but cannot explain. Is it a coincidence that you are right now reading this? AN

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 184 pages

This is the latest of Reich’s writings to appear posthumously. In these excerpts from his diary, Reich, like his mentor, Freud, is remarkably candid about the details of his personal life and sexuality. Indeed, some of his most private confessions sound remarkably Freudian: “Twice I masturbated while consciously fantasizing about my mother-saw and felt only her abdomen, never her face.” Also includes his 1919 memoir, Childhood and Puberty, in which Reich candidly tells of his first sexual experiences and the further development of his sexual life. JB

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 178 pages
Illustrated

The biggest and best-kept secret of World War II: August 10, 1945, four days after Hiroshima and five days before their surrender, Japan successfully test-fired a “genzai bakudan”—an atomic bomb—on the northern peninsula of occupied Korea. Only America’s use of the B-29 bomber over industrial cities on the mainland prevented the bomb from being used by Japan three months earlier (it had to be moved to safer ground). The weapon was intended for use by kamikaze planes aimed at American battleships in the attack on Japan. The world’s first nuclear war! This fascinating footnote to history was reported in the Atlanta Constitution in 1946, and quietly disappeared for lack of verification—the Russians overran Korea and sent all the Japanese atomic equipment home after the war. The author has traced this astonishing tale with the help of newly declassified American intelligence first gathered during the war and during the occupation of Japan. Includes interviews with the scientists involved in the atomic program, and Spanish spies who stole American atomic secrets for Japan, and the story of a German U-boat desperately trying to reach Japan with a cargo of uranium in the final days before the Third Reich’s collapse. GR

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 268 pages

History for the most part has not recognized the many women who, dressed as men, fought on both sides during the Civil War. Sometimes their true sex was discovered only after they had been injured or killed in the line of fire. Others were hastily buried where they fell on the battleground, thus taking their secret with them to the grave. Some survived the war and wrote of their exploits, while regimental histories recalled still others. Author Richard Hall turned to the latter two sources to write this mostly anecdotal yet worthwhile narrative of these “patriots in disguise.” While memoirs such as those of Union soldier and spy Sarah Emma Edmonds (a.k.a. “Franklin Thompson”) or Confederate soldier and spy Loreta Janeta Velazquez (who fought as “Lieutenant Henry T. Buford”) are colorfully interesting, it is the stories of women who chose not to publicize their exploits that are truly fascinating. Consider the case of Jennie Hodgers, who joined the Union army as “Albert D.J. Cashier,” and maintained her disguise throughout a three-year term of enlistment. She then dressed and lived as a man until a 1913 accident exposed her gender. While this work cannot match the depth of research provided by a primary-sourced analysis, it remains a fascinating overview of a little-known area of Civil War history. LP

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 225 pages
Illustrated

“Corruption is as American as cherry pie. From Jamestown to Whitewater, it runs through our history like a scarlet thread. The grafting politician, corrupt business tycoon, crooked labor baron and hypocritical preacher are prominent features of American folklore. Graft and corruption played a vital role in the development of modern American society and the creation of the complex, interlocking machinery of government and business that determines the course of our affairs. Large-scale chiseling has always been a left-handed form of endeavor in this country, operating parallel with—and often more efficiently than—more legitimate enterprise.
Nevertheless, the importance of corruption in shaping the United States has largely gone unrecognized. Every time there is a new scandal, analysts strain to put the events into some sort of perspective, yet they reveal almost total ignorance of the successive waves of corruption that have swept over America… The purpose of this book is to flip over the flat rock of our history and see what crawls out.” The author is a former correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and former member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 431 pages