M. Icks & E. Shiraev 
Character Assassination throughout the Ages [PDF ebook] 

Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Character Assassination: How Political Psychologists May Assist Historians; Eric Shiraev Ancient Rome 2. Character Attack and Invective Speech in the Roman Republic: Cicero as Target; Henriette van der Blom 3. Reports about the ‘sexual life’ of early Roman emperors: A case of character assassination?; Jan Meister 4. Creating Tyrants in Ancient Rome: Character Assassination and Imperial Investiture; Martijn Icks 5. Editorial reflections: Ancient Rome The Middle Ages 6. Falsifying the Prophet: Muhammad at the Hands of his Earliest Christian Biographers in the West; Kenneth Wolf 7. Louis of Orléans, Isabeau of Bavaria, and the Burgundian Propaganda Machine, 1392-1407; Tracy Adams 8. A Newcomer in Defamatory Propaganda: Youth (Late Fourteenth to Early Fifteenth Century); Gilles Lecuppre 9. Editorial Reflections: Medieval Cases The Early Modern Age 10. The Ass in the Seat of St. Peter: Defamation of the Pope in early Lutheran Flugschriften; Bobbi Dykema 11. Odious and Vile Names: Political Character Assassination and Purging in the French Revolution; Mette Harder 12. Edwina Hagen 13. Editorial Reflections: Early Modern Cases The Modern Age 14. Character Attacks and American Presidents; Jason Smart and Eric Shiraev 15. The Gao-Rao Affair: A Case of Character Assassination in Chinese Politics in the 1950s; Eric Shiraev and Zi Yang 16. A Character Assassination Attempt: The Case of Václav Havel; Martina Klicperová-Baker 17. Editorial Reflections: Modern Cases Epilogue ?

Martijn Icks is a researcher and teacher at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, as well as a former Marie Curie Fellow. He specializes in Roman imperial history and the history of character assassination. His study on the Roman emperor Elagabalus has appeared in three languages.

Eric Shiraev is author, co-author, and co-editor of fourteen books and numerous publications in the fields of political psychology, international relations, and cross-cultural studies. He emphasizes the role of identity and culture in politics and international relations. In addition to his teaching and research work, he writes policy briefs and opinion essays for the media and government and nongovernment organizations.