Books with author James Barber

To this day, the name Stalin conjures an image of a frightening shadowy figure who was, by all respected accounts, the worst killer in history. This book hopes to answer some pivotal questions about the man. Who was Stalin? Where did he and his ideas come from? How did he wield his power and why? And what is the scale of the horrors Stalin inflicted?

Idi Amin, who preferred to be called "Big Daddy," will go down in history as one of the most vilified mass murderers of the twentieth century. Self proclaimed President of Uganda, Amin illegally seized power in a military coup in 1971 and tyrannically ruled ten million fellow Ugandans until he ignominiously fled the African country in 1979. In his wake Amin left deplorable examples of brutality, torture, murder, and demented personal behavior. During his eight years of barbaric rule an estimated three hundred thousand Ugandans were killed by his orders. Although Amin died in exile in 2003 a failed dictator, there is still much to be learned about Uganda's history, Amin's dictatorship, and how he orchestrated his rise to power and maintained power while inflicting so much pain on his followers.

Archer, woodsman, hunter of man and beast, consort to the Avatar of the Great Mother, father, and hero. Jared was all these things during his life, and more. But, before he helped save the city of Aeirsga, the Kingdom of Illyander and later the world of Aronshae, he was an orphan; a child lost in the world. This is the story of Jared in his early years and how his parents came to Illyander from the mysterious Eastern Kingdom, how they died, and how the young boy who had lost his parents before he knew them became one of the finest scouts and bounty hunters in all of Illyander. Sirus, his secretive mentor, taught him to use his abilities to commune with the animals of the forest and that trust was a liability he could ill afford. Jared’s journey down the various paths of his life eventually led him to be one of the greatest heroes in all of Aronshae, but before that he was just a young man, trying to survive in a world that he had been taught to fear and never told why.

During the European Middle Ages, few issues, if any, occupied peoples' spirits more than the uncertainty of whether heaven or hell awaited their souls. Some spiritual men called monks focused on aiding others to achieve their path to heaven through dedication to prayer, performing charitable works, and asceticism. Working alone as hermits or grouped in monasteries, monks made remarkable contributions to European culture as scholars, artists, musicians, and educators.