Wolves, Jackals, and Foxes: The Assassins Who Changed History

by Kris Hollington

"A history of the twentieth century punctuated by gunshots. . . . An exciting account." --"Sunday Telegraph "(UK)Exploding telephones, pipe-guns, bullets made of teeth, aspirin explosives, cobra-venom darts, a rifle that shoots around corners, exploding clams, samurai swords, karate chops, poisoned umbrellas, and a fuel-laden light aircraft. Sometimes even a regular gun. These are just some of the methods that have been used over the last ?fty years...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312378998
• ISBN13: 9780312378998
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 426 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.9" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Interesting, But No Consistent Theme or Conclusions

Kris Hollingworth's book Wolves, Jackals, and Foxes is a good read about 20th century assassinations. The reading is quick and the stories are told with as light a touch as one can when dealing with the subject matter. The book is episodic; each chapter focuses on a different assassination, and there is no real overarching theme here. Assassins are generally identified by Hollingsworth by motive: political or governmental (wolves), terrorists or power (jackals), or notoriety (foxes). However, the incidents in the book are not grouped into sections. And, despite the categorizations, Hollingsworth doesn't delve much into the psychology of the assassins mentioned or reach any real conclusions; the stories are mostly "this happened, then something else happened." I didn't notice any real political slant as another reviewer found. My favorite installments dealt with an attempted assassination of Harry S. Truman, and the possible assassination of Josef Stalin (it has not been conclusively proven that Lavrenti Beria actually poisoned him). The story about ETA bombers actually watching "Day of the Jackal" together at a theater also had some gallows humor about it. If you can get past the stop-and-go nature of the book, it's a pretty decent read on a very interesting subject.

Terrific sense of irony

There is an undercurrent of irony throughout the book, and the author is definitely present in the conversation, i.e., expressing sardonic sense of humor. I found it to be relatively equally distributed across political boundaries, no one escapes the quips.