Defiance The Story of One Man Who Stood Up to the Sicilian Mafia

'Cosa Nostra has been keeping its head down; all the more reason to keep it in the public eye. For many tourists who visit Sicily each year, the Mafia is simply folklore, part of local colour to accompany the Greek ruins, plates of pasta and bottles of nero d'avola. In his book Defiance, Tom Behan looks beyond the folklore to describe the ugly, violent and insidious nature of the Sicilian Mafia and the courage needed to challenge it. Few have that courage. Peppino Impastato, a young leftwing activist who lived in Cinisi near Palermo, was one who did and Behan tells the story of his efforts in the 1970s, and of his fate at the hands of Cosa Nostra in 1978' - David Lane, 'Berlusconi's Shadow: Crime, Justice and the Pursuit of Power'; 'Dr Pourshariati's book proposes a reinterpretation of the structure of the Sasanian Empire and of the power struggle that followed the end of the Byzantine-Persian War of 602-628. The author argues that throughout most of its history the Sasanian state was a confederative structure, in which the north and east (the old Parthian territories of Media and Khurasan) were highly autonomous both politically and culturally. It was Khusraw II's (590-628) disastrous effort to centralize the state that led to its collapse and to the Arab Conquests. Dr Pourshariati also argues for a significant redating of critical moments in the Arab conquests in Iraq. Taken as a whole, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire is original, innovative, bold, and generally persuasive.' - Stephen Humphreys, Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History, University of California, Santa Barbara