Dash, Mike 1965–

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Dash, Mike 1965–

PERSONAL:

Born 1965, in England; married; wife's name Penny (an editorial director); children: Ffion (daughter). Education: King's College, University of London, Ph.D., 1990.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Writer and/or editor for periodicals, including Fashion Weekly, Licensing Reporter, Ceramic Industries International, Newsagent, Magazine Week, and United Kingdom Press Gazette; seven years with John Brown Publishing; Fortean Times, began as contributing editor, became publisher.

WRITINGS:

The Limit: Engineering at the Boundaries of Science, BBC Books (London, England), 1995.

Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Surrounding Unknown, Heinemann (London, England) 1997, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 1999.

Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused, Gollancz (London, England), 1999, Crown (New York, NY), 2000.

Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny, Crown (New York, NY), 2002.

Thug: The True Story of India's Murderous Cult, Granta (London, England), 2005.

Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century, Crown (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mike Dash, who has been characterized by reviewers as a rationalist skeptic, has spent a great deal of time investigating accounts of UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, phone calls from beyond the grave, and other spooky phenomena. As chief researcher for the Fortean Times, a periodical devoted to strange phenomena, Dash once said: "If half of one percent of such phenomena turn out to be true, science will be revolutionized, history rewritten, and … we are likely to learn much about the nature of perception, memory, and belief."

In addition, Dash notes, belief in such phenomena has changed history. For example, in 1856, a young African girl—a member of the Xhosa tribe—had a vision in which two beings told her that sinful people should slaughter all their cattle. Her people believed in the vision, and killed 400,000 cattle, which led to the death of 40,000 Xhosa people and the absorption of their territory by South Africa. Dash believes that many of bizarre phenomena are the result of biochemical factors, such as epilepsy, oxygen starvation, and other problems, but not all of the events he mentions have an explanation.

Dash has written a number of histories based on his extensive research of his subjects. In Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused, he examines the "tulip mania" of 1633-67, when Dutch society was overtaken by a passion for the flowers. Bulbs were sold for huge prices—often for as much as the cost of two houses. Some flowers, which were gaudily striped, were ironically the result of a virus that weakened the plants, making them rarer. At the height of the mania, even average flowers were sold for huge prices. The market collapsed almost overnight after reaching this peak of frenzy, and a wave of bankruptcy and despair among tulip speculators ensued.

Jennifer Potter wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that Dash "has the story-teller's knack of making his readers feel present in the sweaty, smoke-filled taverns of Haarlem, where the trade took place in an alcoholic haze. Dash's skill is to make the madness and its aftermath not merely plausible, but almost inevitable."

Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny is Dash's account of the 1629 wreck of the East India Company (VOC) ship and the following mutiny. The merchant and passenger ship was on its maiden voyage and had left Amsterdam seven months earlier when it hit a reef in the South Pacific. Several hundred passengers and fifty crew members took refuge on a tiny island, and officers in lifeboats, led by Captain Ariaen Jacobszoon, headed for Java to seek help. The "heretic" of the title was Jeronimus Corneliszoon, who was left in charge of what became a psychopathic free-for-all in which murder by all means was committed. Corneliszoon himself poisoned an infant who kept him awake with its crying.

The VOC lost ten percent of the ships it annually sent to Java, but what makes this tragedy notable is the extent of the brutality. Corneliszoon was a charismatic religious fanatic who was able to manipulate those on the island, and his actions greatly distressed the Calvinist Netherlanders at home. The highest-ranking VOC official, Francisco Pelseart, sailed to Java in a small boat but returned to rescue the cargo of silver.

Booklist reviewer Gilbert Taylor wrote that "Dash astutely incorporates material on ships, navigation, law, theology, and psychology. An extraordinarily riveting narrative."

Thug: The True Story of India's Murderous Cult is a history of Thugs in nineteenth-century India, particularly from 1800 to 1840, gangs that stole and murdered, often by strangulation with a cloth scarf, usually yellow. Bodies of victims were mutilated and cut to let the gas escape, and eye stabbing was employed in the grisly, cultish forms of killing.

"Mike Dash is to be congratulated on two counts," wrote Alex Ninian in Contemporary Review. "One is the serious, meticulous, historic research and the other is his flair for putting it across to the reader as a goodpaced, gripping, if horrific, story."

Booklist contributor Jay Freeman called Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century "a juicy but ultimately tragic tale that effectively captures a bygone era of a great city." The city is New York, and the area in question came to be known as the "Tenderloin" section of Manhattan. It was here that gambling, prostitution, and other crime thrived, and into this environment came Charles Becker (1870-1915), who would become the only New York City policeman to be executed for murder. Becker was of German descent, a Republican on a largely Democratic Irish force, who gained through theft, perjury, and graft. In 1911 he headed a vice squad, and in another year he was running a large extortion racket. One of his victims, gambler Herman Rosenthal, exposed his activities and was then shot to death. His second trial, in 1914, led to his electrocution. Dash includes appearances by real people, including writer Stephen Crane, Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, and Tammany Hall politician "Big Tim" Sullivan.

Library Journal contributor Frederick J. Augustyn, Jr., wrote: "Dash serves up an intriguing story that will interest social historians and general readers alike."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the MadHeretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny, p. 687; April 15, 2007, Jay Freeman, review of Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century, p. 7.

Contemporary Review, December, 2005, Alex Ninian, review of Thug: The True Story of India's Murderous Cult, p. 372.

Geographical, May, 2005, Mick Herron, review of Thug, p. 76.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2001, review of Batavia's Graveyard, p. 1593.

Library Journal, March 1, 2002, Robert C. Jones, review of Batavia's Graveyard, p. 117; March 1, 2007, Frederick J. Augustyn, Jr., review of Satan's Circus, p. 94.

National Geographic Adventure, January-February, 2002, Anthony Brandt, review of Batavia's Graveyard, p. 38.

New Scientist, October 4, 1997, review of Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Surrounding Unknown, p. 42.

New York Times Book Review, April 7, 2002, Paul Collins, review of Batavia's Graveyard, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, November 15, 1999, review of Borderlands, p. 50; January 7, 2002, review of Batavia's Graveyard, p. 57; March 19, 2007, review of Satan's Circus, p. 51.

Times Literary Supplement, October 15, 1999, Jennifer Potter, review of Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused, p. 21.