Download or read book The Fine Cotton Fiasco written by Peter Hoysted and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brisbane, 1984. It all started with a simple plan to secretly swap a mediocre horse with a faster one, and rake in the cash with a few well-placed bets. What could possibly go wrong? In The Fine Cotton Fiasco, Peter Hoysted and Pat Sheil brilliantly tell the scarcely believable tale of how - through a combination of horrendous mismanagement, terrible judgement and comically bad luck - the scheme gradually unravelled. How did a horse with white painted socks dripping onto the turf come to hold the hopes of punters across Australia and beyond? How was a supposedly secret plan so widely advertised that even the Queensland Commissioner of Police placed a bet? And how much of a cover-up ensued in the aftermath of this absolute debacle? The story of Fine Cotton is the stuff of Australian legend. It features hardcore crims, likeable rogues and a supporting cast that ranged from the hapless to the hopeless - with some entirely innocent bystanders thrown in for good measure. Not every crazy scheme cooked up by a couple of inmates in Boggo Road Gaol would culminate in a story that will be told across the nation for the next hundred years. But this one did.
Download or read book Fine Cotton Fiasco written by Peter Hoysted and published by Nero. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible tale of the Fine Cotton Affair The plan was simple enough. Buy a horse of limited ability, swap it over before a race with a horse almost identical to it but with greater talent and speed, and sit back and make millions. But it all went pear-shaped when the ringer became injured . . . On 21 August 1984 the Eagle Farm racetrack in Brisbane was full to bursting. Forget the Melbourne Cup; this was the race that really stopped the nation - a novice handicap, the field a collection of try-hards, the rugged and the buggered. In the preceding hours and days there had been a massive betting plunge on a mediocre horse even for this field, the nine-year-old Fine Cotton. Across Australia, thousands of punters who believed they had the tip of the century held their breath . . . Journalist and humorist Peter Hoysted - a.k.a. Jack the Insider - turns his uniquely satirical eye to Australian racing's most infamous ring-in. The Fine Cotton Fiascois the true story of a desperate Sydney gangster, corrupt police, a foolhardy trainer, a dodgy used-car salesman, a bucket of henna hair dye, an unsuspecting horse (two, actually), and a 'colourful racing identity' who saw it all coming and made a fortune for himself while everyone else did their dough.
Download or read book The Fine Cotton Fiasco written by Peter Hoysted and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fiasco written by James Robert Parish and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2008-05-02 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A longtime industry insider and acclaimed Hollywood historian goes behind the scenes to tell the stories of 15 of the most spectacular movie megaflops of the past 50 years, such as Cleopatra, The Cotton Club, and Waterworld. He recounts, in every gory detail, how enormous hubris, unbridled ambition, artistic hauteur, and bad business sense on the parts of Tinsel Town wheeler-dealers and superstars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, and Francis Ford Coppola, conspired to engender some of the worst films ever.
Download or read book Unholy Trinity written by Denis Ryan and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2013 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australian.
Download or read book Fall and Rise written by Mitchell Zuckoff and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Better and more comprehensive than any prior account. . . . Those of us who lived through those days will find the book cathartic; those rising generations who were too young to remember 9/11, or who weren’t yet born, will find it revelatory.” — John Farmer, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission and author of The Ground Truth “With his rigorous research and moral clarity, Mitchell Zuckoff has provided us with an invaluable service. He has deepened our understanding of what happened on 9/11 and recorded the voices of the victims and the survivors. What’s more, he has ensured that we never forget.” —David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon Years in the making, this spellbinding, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting narrative is an unforgettable portrait of 9/11. This is a 9/11 book like no other. Masterfully weaving together multiple strands of the events in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Fall and Rise is a mesmerizing, minute-by-minute account of that terrible day. In the days and months after 9/11, Mitchell Zuckoff, then a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote about the attacks, the victims, and their families. After further years of meticulous reporting, Zuckoff has filled Fall and Rise with voices of the lost and the saved. The result is an utterly gripping book, filled with intimate stories of people most affected by the events of that sunny Tuesday in September: an out-of-work actor stuck in an elevator in the North Tower of the World Trade Center; the heroes aboard Flight 93 deciding to take action; a veteran trapped in the inferno in the Pentagon; the fire chief among the first on the scene in sleepy Shanksville; a team of firefighters racing to save an injured woman and themselves; and the men, women, and children flying across country to see loved ones or for work who suddenly faced terrorists bent on murder. Fall and Rise will open new avenues of understanding for everyone who thinks they know the story of 9/11, bringing to life—and in some cases, bringing back to life—the extraordinary ordinary people who experienced the worst day in modern American history. Destined to be a classic, Fall and Rise will move, shock, inspire, and fill hearts with love and admiration for the human spirit as it triumphs in the face of horrifying events.
Download or read book BADNESS written by Gary Jubelin and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM THE HOST OF THE HIT PODCAST I CATCH KILLERS THE BESTSELLING TRUE CRIME BOOK OF 2022 As a cop, I used to sit on one side of the interview room table facing murderers, child abductors and rapists. Now I'm sitting on the other side: disgraced, forced out of the police and judged to be a criminal. I want to show you what the world looks like from here. Talking to crooks, cops, forensic psychologists, scientists and victims, I've gone back to some of Australia's worst acts of badness, including unsolved murders that never made the front pages as well as infamous killings carried out by Ivan Milat and the Granny Killer, the murder of Anita Cobby, the Hoddle Street massacre, Port Arthur, horrific abuse at the Parramatta girls' home and the disappearance of preschooler William Tyrrell. What I've found has made me question everything, including where evil comes from, what drives us to commit crimes and how we can prevent them. I used to think I was on the side of the angels. Now I am not so sure. Gary Jubelin was one of Australia's most celebrated Homicide detectives, leading investigations into the William Tyrrell case, the serial killing of three Aboriginal children in Bowraville and the brutal gangland murder of Terry Falconer. In 2020, he was found guilty of illicitly recording conversations with a witness. Since leaving the NSW Police Force, he has built a career in the media, working in newspapers, television and podcasts. Gary still works hard to help the victims of crime.
Download or read book Mary Ann Cotton written by David Wilson and published by Waterside Press. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was the inspiration for the ITV drama Dark Angel. As one of the UKs leading commentators, David Wilson shows how some serial killers stay in the headlines whilst others rapidly become invisible - or unseen. Yet Mary Ann Cotton is not just the first but perhaps the 1sts most prolific female serial killer, with more victims than Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Beverly Allit or male predators such as Jack the Ripper and Dennis Nilsen. But her own north east of England (and criminologists) apart, she remains largely forgotten, despite poisoning to death up to 21 victims in Britains arsenic century. Exploding myths that every serial killer is a monster, the author draws attention to Cottons charms, allure, capability, skill and ambition - drawing parallels or contrasting the methods and lifestyles of other serial killers from Victorian to modern times. He also shows how events cannot be separated from their social context here the industrial revolution, growing mobility, womens emancipation and greater assertiveness. And concerning the reticence of human nature, like Dr Harold Shipman, Cotton was allowed to go on killing despite reasons to suspect her. The book contains other resonances to aid understanding of how serial murderers can go undiscovered despite such things as coincidence, gossip, whispers or motives that become more obvious with the benefit of hindsight. It is also a detective story in which the persistence of a single individual saw Cotton tried and executed, events analysed first-hand from the archives and location visits as the author fills the gaps in a remarkable story. By a leading expert on serial killers; Meticulously researched and highly readable; Fresh interpretations mean this book is destined to be the definitive title on Mary Ann Cotton. An enthralling read David Wilson does not write generic true crime, but history of the highest order: Judith Flanders, best-selling author, journalist and historian. David Wilson is Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University. An ex-prison governor he has broadcast for the BBC, Channel 4, Sky and Channel 5 (where he presents Killers Behind Bars). His books include Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims 1960-2006 (2007) and Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News (2011).
Download or read book 13 Bankers written by Simon Johnson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.
Download or read book Midnight Rising written by Tony Horwitz and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.
Download or read book Albion s Seed written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-14 with total page 981 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.
Download or read book Engaging the Muslim World written by Juan Cole and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With clarity and concision, Juan Cole disentangles the key foreign policy issues that America is grappling with today--from our dependence on Middle East petroleum to the promotion of Islamophobia by the American right--and delivers his informed advice on the best way forward. Cole's unique ability to take the true Muslim perspective into account when looking at East-West relations make his insights well-rounded and prescient as he suggests a course of action on fundamental issues like religion, oil, war and peace. With substantive recommendations for the next administration on how to move forward in key countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, Engaging the Muslim World reveals how we can repair the damage of the disastrous foreign policy of the last eight years and forge ahead on a path of peace and prosperity. Cole argues: * Al-Qaeda is not a mass movement like fascism or communism but rather a small political cult like the American far right circles that produced Timothy McVeigh. * The Muslim world is not a new Soviet Bloc but rather is full of close allies or potential allies. * There can be no such thing as American energy independence, we will need Islamic oil to survive as a superpower into the next century. * Iran is not an implacable enemy of the U.S.--it can and should be fruitfully engaged, which is a necessary step for American energy security since Tehran can play the spoiler in the strategic Persian Gulf. * America's best hope in Iraq is careful, deliberate military disengagement, rather than either through immediate withdrawal or a century-long military presence--in other words, both the Democrat and Republican presidential candidates are wrong.
Download or read book The Book of the Damned written by Charles Fort and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.
Download or read book Empire of Pain written by Patrick Radden Keefe and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing. "A real-life version of the HBO series Succession with a lethal sting in its tail…a masterful work of narrative reportage.” – Laura Miller, Slate The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, but the source of the family fortune was vague—until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Empire of Pain is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Empire of Pain is a ferociously compelling portrait of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world’s great fortunes.
Download or read book Andrew Carnegie written by David Nasaw and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 932 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller! “Beautifully crafted and fun to read.” —Louis Galambos, The Wall Street Journal “Nasaw’s research is extraordinary.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Make no mistake: David Nasaw has produced the most thorough, accurate and authoritative biography of Carnegie to date.” —Salon.com The definitive account of the life of Andrew Carnegie Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists—in what will prove to be the biography of the season. Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public—a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism—Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma. Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the campaign first against American involvement in the Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. With a trove of new material—unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain—Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this fascinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.
Download or read book Here There and Everywhere written by Geoff Emerick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-03-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An all-access, firsthand account of the life and music of one of history's most beloved bands--from an original mastering engineer at Abbey Road Geoff Emerick became an assistant engineer at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in 1962 at age fifteen, and was present as a new band called the Beatles recorded their first songs. He later worked with the Beatles as they recorded their singles “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the songs that would propel them to international superstardom. In 1964 he would witness the transformation of this young and playful group from Liverpool into professional, polished musicians as they put to tape classic songs such as “Eight Days A Week” and “I Feel Fine.” Then, in 1966, at age nineteen, Geoff Emerick became the Beatles’ chief engineer, the man responsible for their distinctive sound as they recorded the classic album Revolver, in which they pioneered innovative recording techniques that changed the course of rock history. Emerick would also engineer the monumental Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums, considered by many the greatest rock recordings of all time. In Here, There and Everywhere he reveals the creative process of the band in the studio, and describes how he achieved the sounds on their most famous songs. Emerick also brings to light the personal dynamics of the band, from the relentless (and increasingly mean-spirited) competition between Lennon and McCartney to the infighting and frustration that eventually brought a bitter end to the greatest rock band the world has ever known.
Download or read book Bitcoin Widow written by Jennifer Robertson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She met the man of her dreams and suddenly had it all. Then, in one fateful night, she lost everything, and the nightmare began Jennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bitcoin wizard who quickly amassed substantial wealth through his company, Quadriga. The couple travelled the world, first class all the way, while Cotten worked on his multitude of encrypted laptops. Then, while the couple was on their honeymoon in India, opening an orphanage in their name, Gerry fell ill and died in a matter of hours. Jennifer was consumed by grief and guilt, but that was only the beginning. It turned out that Gerry owed $250 million to Quadriga customers, and all the passwords to his encrypted virtual vaults, hidden on his many laptops, had died with him. Jennifer was left with more than one hundred thousand investors looking for their money, and questions, suspicions and accusations spiralling dangerously out of control. The Quadriga scandal touched off major investment and criminal investigations, not to mention Internet rumours circulating on dark message boards, including claims that Gerry had faked his own death and that his wife was the real mastermind behind a sophisticated sting operation. While Jennifer waited for a dead man’s switch e-mail that would probably never come, it became clear that Cotten had gambled away about $100 million of the funds entrusted to him for investment in his many schemes, leaving Robertson holding the bag. Bitcoin Widow is Catch Me If You Can meets a widow betrayed, a life of fairy-tale romance and private jets torched by duplicity, as Jennifer Robertson tries to reset her life in the wake of one of the biggest investment scandals of the digital age.
