Takes us into the bizarre and often humorous lives of such people as Lady Blount, who was sure that the earth is flat, Cyrus Teed, who believed that the earth is a hollow shell with us in the inside; Edward Hine, who believed that the British are the lost Tribes of Israel; and Baron de Guldenstubbe, who was sure that statues wrote him letters. British writer and housewife Nesta Webster devoted her life to exposing international conspiracies, and Father O'Callaghan devoted his to opposing interest on loans. The extraordinary characters in this book were and in some cases still are wholehearted enthusiasts for the various causes and outrageous notions they adopted, and John Michell describes their adventures with spirit and compassion.

Brief accounts of men and women, from the eighteenth century to the present, whose lives have been governed by unusual and improbable passions, ideas, and dreams

“Imagine if Monty Python wrote the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, and you sort of get the idea. Afraid you’re afflicted with an unknown malady? Finally you have a place to turn!” —Book Sense You hold in your hands the most complete and official guide to imaginary ailments ever assembled—each disease carefully documented by the most stellar collection of speculative fiction writers ever to play doctor. Detailed within for your reading and diagnostic pleasure are the frightening, ridiculous, and downright absurdly hilarious symptoms, histories, and possible cures to all the ills human flesh isn’t heir to, including Ballistic Organ Disease, Delusions of Universal Grandeur, and Reverse Pinocchio Syndrome. Lavishly illustrated with cunning examples of everything that can’t go wrong with you, the Lambshead Guide provides a healthy dose of good humor and relief for hypochondriacs, pessimists, and lovers of imaginative fiction everywhere. Even if you don’t have Pentzler’s Lubriciousness or Tian Shan-Gobi Assimilation, the cure for whatever seriousness may ail you is in this remarkable collection.

A biography of a key figure in psychedelic history: the man who turned Timothy Leary on to LSD. Of all the figures associated with the history of LSD there is none more enigmatic than Michael Hollingshead. Appearing as if from nowhere, he turned Timothy Leary on to LSD in 1962, and was influential in Leary's years at Harvard, Millbrook, and beyond. A Zelig-like character, Hollingshead was a key player in London's early LSD scene. In 1965 he went to London to establish a cultural beachhead for Leary's LSD philosophy at the World Psychedelic Centre in Chelsea. Following a spell in prison, where he dosed KGB spy George Blake, he continued to pursue adventures with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, established a psychedelic commune, created the first electronic I Ching installation, published an underground magazine, and spent time in Nepal, before dying a mysterious death in Bolivia in the 1980s. Psychedelic trickster guru, or conman and charlatan? Exactly who Hollingshead was and what his motives were remain unclear. Some believed he was working for the secret services, others that he was just a Leary wannabe, his aspirations destroyed by his deviant personality and addiction to alcohol and opiates. Divine Rascal is the first reliable biography of one of psychedelia's key figures, without whom the trajectory of LSD in the world would have been radically different.

Each of us can tell our personal story via a CV (curriculum vitae), so why not a nation? This is The National CV of Britain, a pioneering document which summarises the achievements of the Influential Islanders in a brief, upbeat and rigorous way, never before attempted. Britain has made a wildly disproportionate contribution to civilisation and this work celebrates the fact with verve and intellectual fireworks. The CV sets out to make the story of Britain easy and fun to access, for young and old alike, with a fully interactive format. Itself just 30 pages long, the CV comes with an inbuilt database over ten times as long. This is The National CVpedia of Britain. Click on a CV claim that seems to you improbable and you will be whisked to the evidence behind it. Browse, delve, imbibe, devour - whatever way you want to interact with the CV, you will find an abundance of facts, figures and delightful anecdotes to interest and astound. The National CV of Britain is a unique forward-looking history that has the Influential Islanders ‘Applying for the future’. This is a fully interactive book, and we recommend it to be used with a Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire or iPad.

Conspiracies are everywhere. they are the lifeblood of politics, business and our daily lives. this truly international and all-embracing encyclopedia explains the details of the world's major popular conspiracies, listing them chronologically under subject matter and cross-referencing them continually (because so many conspiracy theories interact on some level). Conspiracies are often international in their sweep and their impact. the brutal stabbing of Julius Caesar (the conspiracy which has defined political assassinations ever since) plunged the Roman Empire into civil war, which then engulfed much of the known western world. More recently the Cambridge spies (Philby, Blunt, MacLean and Burgess) helped Russia throughout WWII and then re-defined the Cold War afterwards, Philby's defection casting a 30-year shadow over CIA/Anglo-American relations. though conspiracies define our everyday lives, there is no body of serious academic research to understand their role, nature or defining characteristics. Most historians prefer to adhere to the cock-up theory of history, in which everything happens by accident or incompetence. Although this view is favoured by academics and historians, it is rejected by a large part of the general public who prefer the evidence of their own lives. However they consume their media, what they see is a mesh of conspiracies that define the texture of their everyday lives, often for the worst. Most people believe that there is a grain of truth in most theories about conspiracies. this book is for them.