Our world has been shaped by giants that include the good, the bad, and the ugly. Kings, whores, poets, conquerors, empresses, composers, explorers and psychopaths...Many combine the heroic with the monstrous. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, 'Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves. Therefore change is only possible through unreasonable people.' This is the history of the world told through the entertaining, horrifying and inspiring characters that everyone should know and no one should forget. From Ramses the Great to Ayatollah Khomeini, from Henry VIII to John Paul II, and from Tchaikovsky to Muhammad Ali, Heroes and Monsters is informative and insightful.