Peter Vronsky (2)

Peter Vronsky is an investigative historian, author, and filmmaker. He holds a Ph.d. in the history of espionage in international relations and criminal justice history from the University of Toronto. He was born in Canada and has been shooting and producing investigative documentaries and independent films since 1975. Peter Vronsky is the author of the forthcoming history book American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950-2000, scheduled for release by Berkley - Penguin Random House in February, 2021. Vronsky's recent bestselling book Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers From the Stone Age to the Present, was a New York Times Editors Choice in 2018. Peter Vronsky is the author of true-crime history bestsellers, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (Berkley Books - Penguin Random House, 2004.) The sequel Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters was published by Berkley - Penguin Random House in 2007. His book based on his doctoral dissertation is Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle That Made Canada (Allen Lane - Penguin Random House Canada, 2011) a controversial study of the hidden history of Canada's first modern battle during the Fenian Raids of 1866. He worked extensively in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Middle-East, South Africa and in Canada and United States producing and directing numerous cutting edge investigative documentary television specials on subjects ranging from early punk rock and flashback syndrome in Vietnam war veterans to organized crime and nuclear materials smuggling in the break-away regions of the former Soviet Union. Peter Vronsky is the creator of a body of formal video art works exhibited in the 1980s internationally, a former Sony Corporation Artist-in-Residence, and a cited historian of Lee Harvey Oswald's journey to the USSR in 1959-1962. Vronsky earned a Ph.D. in the History Department of the University of Toronto in the fields of criminal justice history and intelligence in international relations. His doctoral thesis, “Combat, Memory and Remembrance in Confederation Era Canada: The Hidden History of the Battle of Ridgeway, June 2, 1866” on the origins of the Canadian secret services during the Civil War era and the Fenian Crisis in Canada focuses on the 1866 battle near Fort Erie, Ontario fought by Canadian volunteers to stop a 1000 strong invasion force of heavily armed Fenian Irish-American insurgents. The dissertation was published in 2011 by Penguin Books as Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the Forgotten 1866 Battle That Made Canada, a volume in their Canadian History series, edited by Robert Bothwell and Margaret Macmillan. Vronsky currently lectures in international relations history, the American Civil War, terrorism, espionage and the history of the Third Reich at Ryerson University in Toronto.