Michael Streeter – författare

In Cyber Crime: All That Matters, Peter Warren and Michael Streeter outline the history, scale and importance of cyber crime. In particular they show how cyber crime, cyber espionage and cyber warfare now pose a major threat to society. After analysing the origins of computer crime among early hackers the authors describe how criminal gangs and rogue states have since moved into the online arena with devastating effect at a time when the modern world - including all the communication services and utilities we have come to take for granted - has become utterly dependent on computers and the internet.

Growing up in the wake of the Spanish military’s shattering defeat at the hands of the United States in 1898 over Cuba and having survived a bullet to the stomach while serving his country in Morocco, it is perhaps no wonder that Francisco Franco’s fame and notoriety was eventually guaranteed by his ruthless pursuit of victory for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.Franco played a major role on the world stage until his death in 1975. At once intensely sentimental and affecting cool indifference at times of bad news, he emphasised the need to obey orders, the importance of individual bravery, absolute loyalty to the Fatherland and the crucial role of the army. Variously courted by the liberal democracies of Britain and France, the Fascist alliance of Hitler and Mussolini and then by anti-communist administrations in Washington, the memory of his successful policies, leading to rapid growth during a time of economic depression, are tempered by his government’s extreme repression of political opponents and perpetration of mass violence during the White Terror. In Franco, Michael Streeter explores the Generalissimo’s legacy as the subject of a cult of personality in one of Europe’s longest-lasting modern dictatorships and considers his genesis, his successes – decades of relative stability and prosperity during a period of great European conflict – and the terrible cost at which they came.

Epitacio Pessoa (1865-1942). Brazil was one of the emerging world powers to be invited to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Having jettisoned her empire just thirty years before, the Portuguese-speaking nation was showed signs of becoming one of the financial powerhouses not just of Latin America, but of the world. In Paris, the country's delegation was led by Epitacio Pessoa, a brilliant lawyer who negotiated a deal to rescue Brazilian coffee from the German ports where it had languished since the middle of the war. He also helped win a place at the top table for Brazil in the new League of Nations. Pessoa was then rewarded by being elected president of Brazil even though he was in Paris at the time. Yet even as Brazil enjoyed its moment of triumph on the international stage, the country's political system was starting to unravel. Pessoa's presidency ended in failure in 1922, its modest achievements overshadowed by bitter army revolts. This, then, is the story of Epitacio Pessoa, the Treaty of Versailles and the rise and fall of Brazil's tumultuous First Republic.