Prince Dracula Son of the Devil

"His name, woven into countless films, plays, and books, conjures images of magic, of evil, of sadism. Few subjects provoke the curiosity and interest of this infamous prince. Most people simply assume that Dracula is nothing more than the product of a storyteller's romantic fantasy. But Dracula was a real-life person. In this carefully researched, compellingly written bibliography, Douglas Myles gives us the historical Dracula, a prince whose military exploits and diabolical cruelty have made him one of the strangest and most contradictory figures in history. On the one hand, he was a fearless warrior who for years held at bay the vast and ruthless power of the marauding Turkish Empire. On the other, he was a fiendishly barbaric tyrant -- a madman if you will -- who slaughtered between 60,000 and 100,000 victims of both sexes and all ages. This was the man who came to be known -- for all too good a reason -- as Vlad the Impaler. the man still remembered in German, Turkish and Hungarian history for his heartless butcheries. The book takes Prince Dracula from his birth in Transylvania to his death in battle forty-five years later, when he was struck down by the very Turkish invaders he had fought to astandstilll on the Danube. In the final scene, Dracula's severed head is mounted on a stake in the great square of Turkish-held Constantinople, the rain beating down, and the only living occupant of the deserted quadrangle a drug-maddened dervish who dances wildly before the remains. The story of Dracula's life, from its painful beginnings to its haunting aftermath, is every bit as gripping as thevividd tableau that brings it to a close." --Book jacket.