If Jason Bourne of the Bourne movie trilogy had to write a thesis before graduating from the CIA’s training camp for assassins, then the following could imaginably have been his.  Melbourne underworld identity, the late Carl Williams It is high time assassinations were legalised. Week after week we learn of shootings, knifings, bashings, many of them being botched attempts by backyard hitmen to…

The ongoing global economic crisis is breeding discontent and fuelling nationalist movements across Europe. Nouriel Roubini Europe went through an exceptional period of peace and prosperity after World War II. This was when West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Italy’s prime minister Alcide De Gasperi and French president Charles de Gaulle laid the foundations of this extraordinary period that led to the formation of…

  THE PECULIAR CASE OF THE ELECTRIC CONSTABLE: A True Tale of Passion, Poison and Pursuit  by Carol Baxter  (London: Oneworld Publications, 2014) Paperback: 416 pages ISBN: 9781780744032 Price: AUD$19.95   Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel   A long time may lapse between the development of a new technology and its being embraced by the general public.  One such example is the telegraph.…

  A GOOD PLACE TO HIDE: How One French Community Saved Thousands Of Lives In World War II by Peter Grose (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014) Paperback: 352 pages ISBN: 9781742376141 Price: AUD$32.95   Reviewed by Bill James   Here is yet another contribution both to the ever-expanding Holocaust genre, and to one of its minor sub-sections: a grass-roots campaign to help Jews…