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Joseph Valachi was a special figure in the history of American crime. Noteworthy as a rare primary source into Mafia events of the Castellammarese War-era (1930-1931), Valachi's documented memories also provide a window into the early gangland of East Harlem, Manhattan and the Bronx. Through his recollections, historians gain a unique soldier-level view of New York-area organized crime families between Prohibition and the Mafia convention at Apalachin, New York. As an early Mafia turncoat and a celebrated informant for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, Valachi became the focus of a best-selling book, a popular motion picture, many hours of televised Senate testimony and a detailed but never published a...
In the Godfather Garden is the true story of the life of Richie “the Boot” Boiardo, one of the most powerful and feared men in the New Jersey underworld. The Boot cut his teeth battling the Jewish gang lord Abner Longy Zwillman on the streets of Newark during Prohibition and endured to become one of the East Coast’s top mobsters, his reign lasting six decades. To the press and the police, this secretive Don insisted he was nothing more than a simple man who enjoyed puttering about in his beloved vegetable garden on his Livingston, New Jersey, estate. In reality, the Boot was a confidante and kingmaker of politicians, a friend of such celebrities as Joe DiMaggio and George Raft, an acqu...
A sweeping and highly readable work on the evolution of America's domestic and global drug war How can the United States chart a path forward in the war on drugs? In Drugs and Thugs, Russell Crandall uncovers the full history of this war that has lasted more than a century. As a scholar and a high-level national security advisor to both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, he provides an essential view of the economic, political, and human impacts of U.S. drug policies. Backed by extensive research, lucid and unbiased analysis of policy, and his own personal experiences, Crandall takes readers from Afghanistan to Colombia, to Peru and Mexico, to Miami International Airport and the border crossing between El Paso and Juarez to trace the complex social networks that make up the drug trade and drug consumption. Through historically driven stories, Crandall reveals how the war on drugs has evolved to address mass incarceration, the opioid epidemic, the legalization and medical use of marijuana, and America's shifting foreign policy.
Introduction -- Black hand, Calabrians, and the Mafia -- "First family" of the New York Mafia -- The Mafia and the Baff murder -- The neapolitan challenge -- New York City in the 1920s -- Castellammare war and "La Cosa Nostra" -- Americanization and the families -- Localism, tradition, and innovation.
This selection of 12 stories from Michigan's past explores some of the Great Lakes State's most compelling mysteries and debunks some of its most famous myths.
The author's world encompasses dilapidated fight arenas, state mental hospitals & chaotic emergency rooms. The inhabitants are his brilliantly etched characters, who battle desperately against fate in a game of life they cannot win but dare not lose. As we approach the end of the century & the millennium, no one writes better or more vividly than Jones does about the personal, private apocalypses we all face in our darkest moments. In one story, a Vietnam vet, a Recon Marine, swims alone across the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, & the Bosporus to maintain "the edge" that kept him alive in wartime - & that is all he now has left. In another, a brilliant doctor verges on a breakdown. In the title story, a young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows the world of boxing shields & protects him from the even crueler world outside of the ring. A number of these stories have appeared in different forms in the New Yorker, Playboy, & Esquire.
From tales of pirate treasure to Jimmy Hoffa’s mysterious disappearance, Michigan Myths and Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of the state’s most fascinating and compelling stories. Most people have heard about the Bermuda Triangle, where ships and people disappear without a trace—but few have heard about the equally deadly Great Lakes Triangle, where one-third of all unsolved sea and air disasters in America take place. Night after night, curious onlookers congregate on a remote hill near the Michigan/Wisconsin border to watch for mysterious lights that rise out of the ground, hover, and then disappear. Are the orbs merely optical phenomena created by headli...