| The Bone-Crushing Principles of Complete and Utter Badassitude | p. 1 |
| Antiquity: Destroying your enemies from the beginning of human history to the fall of Rome in 476 CE | p. 7 |
| Ramses II | p. 9 |
| Egyptian pharaoh who built an empire through propaganda, war, and giant sculptures of his grimacing face | |
| Leonidas | p. 15 |
| His 300 Spartans fought the most famous last stand in history | |
| Xenophon | p. 23 |
| Trapped deep behind enemy lines, he led a small band of mercenaries on an epic odyssey worthy of Homer himself | |
| Alexander the Great | p. 29 |
| Conquered most of the known world before his thirty-third birthday | |
| Chandragupta Maurya | p. 37 |
| Indian warlord who commanded an army of war elephants and an elite detachment of highly trained female bodyguards | |
| Liu Ji | p. 47 |
| This impoverished peasant clawed his way from nothing to become the emperor of China's most powerful dynasty | |
| Gaius Julius Caesar | p. 55 |
| Rome's most daring general was a military genius who laid the foundation for an empire that would last centuries | |
| The Surena | p. 63 |
| Parthian warlord who inflicted, one of the worst defeats the Romans ever suffered | |
| Julia Agrippina | p. 69 |
| The cunning black widow of Rome was the real power behind the throne of three emperors | |
| Alaric the Bold | p. 77 |
| Ruthless ruler of the Visigoths and the first barbarian king to sack Rome in nearly a millennium | |
| The Middle Ages: Getting medieval on their asses: the fall of Rome to the destruction of Constantinople in 1453 | p. 85 |
| Khalid bin Walid | p. 87 |
| The "Sword of Allah" crushed the Persian and Byzantine Empires with just a handful of battle-hardened warriors | |
| Justinian II | p. 95 |
| Brutal Byzantine emperor who let nothing stand in the way of his quest for vengeance | |
| Charles Martel | p. 103 |
| The Hammer of Christendom won the battle that would forever keep the Moors out of Western Europe | |
| Wolf the Quarrelsome | p. 109 |
| Mysterious barbarian leader who only appears in history twice-and both times he's kicking someone's ass | |
| William the Conqueror | p. 117 |
| This crazy bastard's ruthless invasion of England would change the course of history for centuries to come | |
| Harald Hardrada | p. 125 |
| The last of the great Viking sea kings decapitated fools up and down the Mediterranean | |
| El Cid Gampeador | p. 133 |
| Spain's most legendary knight, this hero of the Reconquista never tasted defeat on the field of battle | |
| Tomae Gozen | p. 139 |
| Tough female samurai distinguished herself in countless battles, fighting with the ferocity of ten men | |
| Genghis Khan | p. 145 |
| The tyrannical khan of khans forged history's most expansive empire-one giant pile of human skulls at a time | |
| Vlad the Impaler | p. 153 |
| The real Count Dracula wasn't actually a vampire, but he wasn't exactly a nice guy, either | |
| The Age of Gunpowder: Blowing crap up from 1453 to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 | p. 159 |
| Miyamoto Musashi | p. 161 |
| Wandering samurai swordsman won sixty duels between the ages of thirteen and thirty | |
| Peter the Great | p. 169 |
| The almighty tsar of imperial Russia crushed his enemies and partied like a seventeenth-century rock star | |
| Blackbeard | p. 177 |
| Many sailors believed this fearsome cutthroat was the devil incarnate-they may have been right | |
| Anne Bonny | p. 165 |
| One of the only documented female pirates was also one of history's most dangerous | |
| Peter Francisco | p. 193 |
| Unsung hero of the American Revolution who fought the redcoats with a massive five-foot-long broadsword | |
| Horatio Nelson | p. 201 |
| One-eyed, one-armed British admiral who spent his life blasting French warships into driftwood | |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | p. 209 |
| Corsican commoner seized control of France and repeatedly beat the crap out of Europe's most powerful empires | |
| Aguslina of Aragon | p. 219 |
| The Maid of Saragossa fearlessly defended her city against a rampaging French army | |
| Bass Reeves | p. 227 |
| Runaway slave who became one of most successful lawmen and gunfighters of the American West | |
| Nikola Tesla | p. 237 |
| The greatest mad scientist of all time spent his final days developing a massive atomic death ray | |
| The Modern Era: Mechanized chaos and full-auto destruction: World War I to 2009 | p. 243 |
| Manfred von Richthofen | p. 245 |
| The Red Baron struck fear into the hearts of everything over the skies of Europe, except maybe a few species of birds | |
| Henry Lincoln Johnson | p. 255 |
| From humble beginnings to American war hero, he took on the Germans in hand-to-hand combat to rescue his comrade | |
| Eliot Ness | p. 261 |
| His small group of hard-boiled, "Untouchables" took down the most notorious crime lord in American history | |
| Jack Churchill | p. 269 |
| Swashbuckling British officer fought World War II with a longbow, a broadsword, and a set of bagpipes | |
| Irina Sebrova | p. 277 |
| Soviet pilot flew daring raids over German airspace at the head of an all-female bomber unit known as the "Night Witches" | |
| Bhanbhagta Gurung | p. 285 |
| Gurkha soldier cleared out six enemy bunkers with grenades, a knife, a rock, and anything else he managed to get his hands on | |
| George S. Patton | p. 291 |
| The toughest military commander in American history tossed out traditional military tactics in favor of all-out assaults | |
| Carlos Hathcock | p. 299 |
| Operating deep behind enemy lines in-North Vietnam, this Marine sniper earned a reputation as the deadliest man alive | |
| Bruce Lee | p. 309 |
| The legendary martial arts master honed his body to become the ultimate killing machine | |
| Jonathan Netanyahu | p. 317 |
| Israeli Special Forces commander personally led one of the world's most successful counterterrorist operations | |
| Bibliography | p. 323 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 333 |
| Illustration Credits | p. 335 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
