In the Crosshairs

Famous Assassinations and Attempts from Julius Caesar to John Lennon

Stephen Spignesi

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781510713017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781510713031
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

Assassinations often change the course of history. Here is an intriguing look at dozens of notable assassinations and attempts throughout history, including complete details about the assassin, the victim, the circumstances of the attack, and the outcome. In the Crosshairs also features photos of many of the victims or would-be victims, and rare archival material, including excerpts from original police reports.High-profile celebrities, political figures, religious leaders, and many others have fallen prey to assassins, and many have survived. In the Crosshairs is arranged in alphabetical order, by last name, and includes such details as: On November 8, 1939, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt – 12 minutes after he left a room where he was making a speech, a bomb went off.
Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat would probably have survived the assassin's bullet on October 6, 1981, if he hadn't taken off his bulletproof vest – but he didn't like the way it made his suit bulge.
Robert John Bardo, the murderer of young actress Rebecca Schaeffer, carried with him to the crime scene a copy of J. D, Sallinger's The Catcher in the Rye, just like Mark David Chapman did when he murdered John Lennon nearly nine years earlier.
From notable murders (Abraham Lincoln, Gianni Versace, and Indira Gandhi) to little-known attempts (George W. Bush, Wild Bill Hickock, and Andy Warhol) here is a surprising, informative, and intriguing book that deserves to be on every history buff's bookshelf.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Operation Gratitude
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Preface to the 2016 Edition: Nothing’s Gonna Change My World?
• Introduction: Ita Semper Pro Nobilis
• 1. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
• 2. Thomas Beckett
• 3. Alan Berg
• 4. George W. Bush
• 5. Julius Caesar
• 6. Jimmy Carter
• 7. Fidel Castro
• 8. Dick Cheney
• 9. Jacques Chirac
• 10. Winston Churchill
• 11. Claudius
• 12. Bill Clinton
• 13. John Connally
• 14. Bob Crane
• 15. Jefferson Davis
• 16. Charles De Gaulle
• 17. Thomas Dewey
• 18. Medgar Evers
• 19. Louis Farrakhan
• 20. Archduke Franz Ferdinand
• 21. Larry Flynt
• 22. Gerald Ford
• 23. Henry Clay Frick
• 24. Indira Gandhi
• 25. Mohandas Gandhi
• 26. James Garfield
• 27. Gabrielle Giffords
• 28. Germaine Greer
• 29. George Harrison
• 30. Phil Hartman
• 31. Wild Bill Hickok
• 32. Adolf Hitler
• 33. Herbert Hoover
• 34. Hubert Humphrey
• 35. Andrew Jackson
• 36. Jesse Jackson
• 37. Jesse James
• 38. Andrew Johnson
• 39. Vernon Jordan
• 40. Hamid Karzai
• 41. Edward “Ted” Kennedy
• 42. John F. Kennedy
• 43. Robert F. Kennedy
• 44. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• 45. Vladimir Lenin
• 46. John Lennon
• 47. Abraham Lincoln
• 48. Huey P. Long
• 49. Malcolm X
• 50. Jean-Paul Marat
• 51. Imelda Marcos
• 52. Christopher Marlowe
• 53. William McKinley
• 54. Harvey Milk
• 55. Sal Mineo
• 56. Lord Mountbatten
• 57. Hosni Mubarak
• 58. Haing S. Ngor
• 59. Richard Nixon
• 60. Lee Harvey Oswald
• 61. Pope John Paul II
• 62. Pope Paul VI
• 63. Yitzhak Rabin
• 64. Rasputin
• 65. Ronald Reagan
• 66. George Lincoln Rockwell
• 67. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• 68. Theodore Roosevelt
• 69. Anwar el-Sadat
• 70. Theresa Saldana
• 71. Rebecca Schaeffer
• 72. Monica Seles
• 73. William Henry Seward
• 74. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• 75. Margaret Thatcher
• 76. George Tiller
• 77. Leon Trotsky
• 78. Harry S Truman
• 79. Gianni Versace
• 80. George Wallace
• 81. Andy Warhol
• Afterword: Death by Design
• Appendix: Weapons of Choice
• Notes
• Selected Sources
• About the Author
• Index