Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live
, by Thompson, Ben
- ISBN: 9780061749445 | 0061749443
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 12/9/2009
From the roughest warlords, Vikings, and samurai to pirates, gunfighters, and military commanders, "Badass" presents a collection of the most awesome historical figures to ever run screaming into battle.
Ben Thompson graduated cum laude from the honors program at Florida State University with degrees in history and political science, and has run the war hammer of a website, badassoftheweek.com, since 2004. Even though he's never flown a jetpack over the Atlantic Ocean or punched someone so hard that his head exploded, he is considered by many to be the world's foremost expert on badassitude.
| The Bone-Crushing Principles of Complete and Utter Badassitude | p. 1 |
| Antiquity: Destroying your enemies from the beginning of human history to the fall of Rome in 476 CE | p. 7 |
| Ramses II | p. 9 |
| Egyptian pharaoh who built an empire through propaganda, war, and giant sculptures of his grimacing face | |
| Leonidas | p. 15 |
| His 300 Spartans fought the most famous last stand in history | |
| Xenophon | p. 23 |
| Trapped deep behind enemy lines, he led a small band of mercenaries on an epic odyssey worthy of Homer himself | |
| Alexander the Great | p. 29 |
| Conquered most of the known world before his thirty-third birthday | |
| Chandragupta Maurya | p. 37 |
| Indian warlord who commanded an army of war elephants and an elite detachment of highly trained female bodyguards | |
| Liu Ji | p. 47 |
| This impoverished peasant clawed his way from nothing to become the emperor of China's most powerful dynasty | |
| Gaius Julius Caesar | p. 55 |
| Rome's most daring general was a military genius who laid the foundation for an empire that would last centuries | |
| The Surena | p. 63 |
| Parthian warlord who inflicted, one of the worst defeats the Romans ever suffered | |
| Julia Agrippina | p. 69 |
| The cunning black widow of Rome was the real power behind the throne of three emperors | |
| Alaric the Bold | p. 77 |
| Ruthless ruler of the Visigoths and the first barbarian king to sack Rome in nearly a millennium | |
| The Middle Ages: Getting medieval on their asses: the fall of Rome to the destruction of Constantinople in 1453 | p. 85 |
| Khalid bin Walid | p. 87 |
| The "Sword of Allah" crushed the Persian and Byzantine Empires with just a handful of battle-hardened warriors | |
| Justinian II | p. 95 |
| Brutal Byzantine emperor who let nothing stand in the way of his quest for vengeance | |
| Charles Martel | p. 103 |
| The Hammer of Christendom won the battle that would forever keep the Moors out of Western Europe | |
| Wolf the Quarrelsome | p. 109 |
| Mysterious barbarian leader who only appears in history twice-and both times he's kicking someone's ass | |
| William the Conqueror | p. 117 |
| This crazy bastard's ruthless invasion of England would change the course of history for centuries to come | |
| Harald Hardrada | p. 125 |
| The last of the great Viking sea kings decapitated fools up and down the Mediterranean | |
| El Cid Gampeador | p. 133 |
| Spain's most legendary knight, this hero of the Reconquista never tasted defeat on the field of battle | |
| Tomae Gozen | p. 139 |
| Tough female samurai distinguished herself in countless battles, fighting with the ferocity of ten men | |
| Genghis Khan | p. 145 |
| The tyrannical khan of khans forged history's most expansive empire-one giant pile of human skulls at a time | |
| Vlad the Impaler | p. 153 |
| The real Count Dracula wasn't actually a vampire, but he wasn't exactly a nice guy, either | |
| The Age of Gunpowder: Blowing crap up from 1453 to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 | p. 159 |
| Miyamoto Musashi | p. 161 |
| Wandering samurai swordsman won sixty duels between the ages of thirteen and thirty | |
| Peter the Great | p. 169 |
| The almighty tsar of imperial Russia crushed his enemies and partied like a seventeenth-century rock star | |
| Blackbeard | p. 177 |
| Many sailors believed this fearsome cutthroat was the devil incarnate-they may have been right | |
| Anne Bonny | p. 165 |
| One of the only documented female pirates was also one of history's most dangerous | |
| Peter Francisco | p. 193 |
| Unsung hero of the American Revolution who fought the redcoats with a massive five-foot-long broadsword | |
| Horatio Nelson | p. 201 |
| One-eyed, one-armed British admiral who spent his life blasting French warships into driftwood | |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | p. 209 |
| Corsican commoner seized control of France and repeatedly beat the crap out of Europe's most powerful empires | |
| Aguslina of Aragon | p. 219 |
| The Maid of Saragossa fearlessly defended her city against a rampaging French army | |
| Bass Reeves | p. 227 |
| Runaway slave who became one of most successful lawmen and gunfighters of the American West | |
| Nikola Tesla | p. 237 |
| The greatest mad scientist of all time spent his final days developing a massive atomic death ray | |
| The Modern Era: Mechanized chaos and full-auto destruction: World War I to 2009 | p. 243 |
| Manfred von Richthofen | p. 245 |
| The Red Baron struck fear into the hearts of everything over the skies of Europe, except maybe a few species of birds | |
| Henry Lincoln Johnson | p. 255 |
| From humble beginnings to American war hero, he took on the Germans in hand-to-hand combat to rescue his comrade | |
| Eliot Ness | p. 261 |
| His small group of hard-boiled, "Untouchables" took down the most notorious crime lord in American history | |
| Jack Churchill | p. 269 |
| Swashbuckling British officer fought World War II with a longbow, a broadsword, and a set of bagpipes | |
| Irina Sebrova | p. 277 |
| Soviet pilot flew daring raids over German airspace at the head of an all-female bomber unit known as the "Night Witches" | |
| Bhanbhagta Gurung | p. 285 |
| Gurkha soldier cleared out six enemy bunkers with grenades, a knife, a rock, and anything else he managed to get his hands on | |
| George S. Patton | p. 291 |
| The toughest military commander in American history tossed out traditional military tactics in favor of all-out assaults | |
| Carlos Hathcock | p. 299 |
| Operating deep behind enemy lines in-North Vietnam, this Marine sniper earned a reputation as the deadliest man alive | |
| Bruce Lee | p. 309 |
| The legendary martial arts master honed his body to become the ultimate killing machine | |
| Jonathan Netanyahu | p. 317 |
| Israeli Special Forces commander personally led one of the world's most successful counterterrorist operations | |
| Bibliography | p. 323 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 333 |
| Illustration Credits | p. 335 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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