We learn from our mistakes - don't we? We look back on things that have gone wrong and do our best not to let them happen again. Well, that's the general idea. Unfortunately, history tells us otherwise.
In this fascinating, revelatory book, Derek Wilson picks the ten very worst years in world history - from the destruction of the Roman Empire in 541 to the march on Leningrad in 1942. He identifies the traitors, scumbags and villains, whose lust for power brought such terror to their times, and shows how history has a horrible habit of repeating itself.