Download or read book Gangster 2 Longy Zwillman the Man who Invented Organized Crime written by Mark A. Stuart and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gangland Gotham written by Allan R. May and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-08-12 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organized crime and the mob figures who run it have long captured the imagination of the American public, appearing since the early twentieth century as characters in a host of popular books, movies, and television programs. But often what the public knew of such figures and their criminal careers was as much myth as fact. This book offers highly readable, carefully researched biographies that dispel the the myths but preserve the fascination surrounding 10 infamous New York mob leaders of the twentieth century. Each in-depth biography will help interested readers understand how and why each of these men achieved special notariety within the world of organized crime. Each biography describes the early years of each man, assessing how he came to a criminal career; his rise to prominence within the mob, providing reaction from those who knew him and witnessed his actions; and the last years of his career, assessing why it ended as it did. Each biography is illustrated with a picture of its subject and concludes with a listing of additional information resources, both print and electronic. A detailed subject index provides further access to the large amount of information contained in each biography. A timeline allows readers to quickly and easily track the birth, death, and important events in the life of each mobster.
Download or read book Notorious New Jersey written by Jon Blackwell and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-29 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notorious New Jersey is the definitive guide to murder, mayhem, the mob, and corruption in the Garden State. With tabloid punch, Jon Blackwell tells riveting accounts of Alexander Hamilton falling mortally wounded on the dueling grounds of Weehawken; Dutch Schultz getting pumped full of lead in the men’s room of the Palace Chop House in Newark; and a gang of Islamic terrorists in Jersey City mixing the witch’s brew of explosives that became the first bomb to rock the World Trade Center. Along with these dramatic stories are tales of lesser-known oddities, such as the nineteenth-century murderer whose skin was turned into leather souvenirs, and the state senator from Jersey City who faked his death in a scuba accident in the 1970s in an effort to avoid prison. Blackwell also sheds light on some historical whodunits—was Bruno Hauptmann really guilty of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby? Who was behind the anthrax attacks of 2001? Not forgotten either are notorious characters who may actually be innocent, including Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and those who have never been convicted of wrongdoing although they left office in scandal, including Robert Torricelli and James McGreevey. Through 100 historic true-crime tales that span over 300 years of history, Blackwell shows readers a side of New Jersey that would make even the Sopranos shudder.
Download or read book Nazis in Newark written by Warren Grover and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Well researched, readable, and very interesting"" --Choice ""Nazis in Newark is a model local history that reaches well beyond the border of Essex County, New Jersey, to the national and international arenas. By recounting so many sides of the complicated encounter between Nazis and Jews in Newark, Warren Grover has fashioned a world of street politics, boycotts, Nazi louts and Jewish bruisers that is as compelling and telling in its detail as any grand tome on the supposed failures and successes of American Jewish resistence to the Holocaust... I recommend Nazis in Newark. I intend to use it as a cornerstone of my teaching for some time to come."" --Professor Michael Alexander The Jewish Quarterly Review ""Very few people today realize that the U.S. mainland was the scene of battles against the Nazis. Warren Grover has produced an outstanding work on this subject. The writing is incisive, the ideas are both original and insightful and the thesis masterfully developed and executed. Must reading for anyone interested in American history and ethnic studies."" --William B. Helmreich, CUNY Graduate Center and author of The Enduring Community ""Thanks to tenacious research and deft story-telling, Warren Grover has put the politics of extremism in one city in the shadow of Fascism, Nazism and Communism, and has thus illuminated the terrible dilemmas of the 1930s. His book also compels the reader to consider an historical anomaly: champions of the Third Reich come across as victims whose civil liberties were infringed, and the gangs of Newark responsible for these violations tended to be Jewish. Such ironies make Nazis in Newark worth the interest of anyone intrigued by ethnic conflict and politcal violence in urban America."" --Stephen Whitfield, Max Richter Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis University ""In this fast-paced, thorough study of anti-Nazism in Newark, scholar Warren Grover tells th
Download or read book The Money Trail written by Robert G. Folsom and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of the man who followed the money to bust Al Capone and clean up America's first great crime wave.
Download or read book Kingpin written by Richard Stratton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fast-paced sequel to Smuggler's Blues is a harrowing and at times comical journey through the criminal justice system at the height of America's War on Plants. Captured in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at LAX following a fifteen-year run smuggling marijuana and hashish as part of the hippie mafia, Richard Stratton began a new journey. Kingpin tells the story of the eight years that followed, through two federal trials and the underworld of the federal prison system, at a time when it was undergoing unprecedented expansion due to the War on Drugs. Stratton was shipped by bus from LA's notorious Glass House to jails and prisons across the country, a softening process known as diesel therapy. Resisting pressure to falsely implicate his friend and mentor, Norman Mailer, he was convicted in his second trial under the kingpin statute and sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole. While doing time in prisons from Manhattan's Criminal Hilton to rural Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York, he witnessed brutality as well as camaraderie, rampant trafficking of contraband, and crimes by both guards and convicts. He first learned the lessons of survival. Then he learned to prevail, becoming a jailhouse lawyer and winning the reversal of his kingpin sentence and eventual release. Kingpin includes cameos by Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, and John Gotti, and an account of the author's friendship with mafia don Joe Stassi, a legendary hitman from the early days of the mob who knew gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Abe Zwillman and has insights into the killing of Dutch Schultz and the Kennedy assassination. Kingpin is the second volume in Richard Stratton's trilogy, Remembrance of the War on Plants.
Download or read book Prohibition Gangsters written by Marc Mappen and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master story teller Marc Mappen applies a generational perspective to the gangsters of the Prohibition era—men born in the quarter century span from 1880 to 1905—who came to power with the Eighteenth Amendment. On January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect in the United States, “outlawing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” A group of young criminals from immigrant backgrounds in cities around the nation stepped forward to disobey the law of the land in order to provide alcohol to thirsty Americans. Today the names of these young men—Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond, Nucky Johnson—are more familiar than ever, thanks in part to such cable programs as Boardwalk Empire. Here, Mappen strips way the many myths and legends from television and movies to describe the lives these gangsters lived and the battles they fought. Placing their criminal activities within the context of the issues facing the nation, from the Great Depression, government crackdowns, and politics to sexual morality, immigration, and ethnicity, he also recounts what befell this villainous group as the decades unwound. Making use of FBI and other government files, trial transcripts, and the latest scholarship, the book provides a lively narrative of shootouts, car chases, courtroom clashes, wire tapping, and rub-outs in the roaring 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, and beyond. Mappen asserts that Prohibition changed organized crime in America. Although their activities were mercenary and violent, and they often sought to kill one another, the Prohibition generation built partnerships, assigned territories, and negotiated treaties, however short lived. They were able to transform the loosely associated gangs of the pre-Prohibition era into sophisticated, complex syndicates. In doing so, they inspired an enduring icon—the gangster—in American popular culture and demonstrated the nation’s ideals of innovation and initiative. View a three minute video of Marc Mappen speaking about Prohibition Gangsters.
Download or read book Battling Siki written by Peter Benson and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battling Siki (1887–1925) was once one of the four or five most recognizable black men in the world and was written about by a host of great writers, including George Bernard Shaw, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon, Janet Flanner, and Ernest Hemingway. Peter Benson’s lively biography of the first African to win a world championship in boxing delves into the complex world of sports, race, colonialism, and the cult of personality in the early twentieth century.
Download or read book The First Black Boxing Champions written by Colleen Aycock and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents fifteen chapters of biography of African American and black champions and challengers of the early prize ring. They range from Tom Molineaux, a slave who won freedom and fame in the ring in the early 1800s; to Joe Gans, the first African American world champion; to the flamboyant Jack Johnson, deemed such a threat to white society that film of his defeat of former champion and "Great White Hope" Jim Jeffries was banned across much of the country. Photographs, period drawings, cartoons, and fight posters enhance the biographies. Round-by-round coverage of select historic fights is included, as is a foreword by Hall-of-Fame boxing announcer Al Bernstein.
Download or read book Class Struggle in Hollywood 1930 1950 written by Gerald Horne and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A taut narrative in elegant prose . . . Horne has unearthed a vitally important and mostly forgotten aspect of Hollywood and labor history.” —Publishers Weekly As World War II wound down in 1945 and the cold war heated up, the skilled trades that made up the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) began a tumultuous strike at the major Hollywood studios. This turmoil escalated further when the studios retaliated by locking out CSU in 1946. This labor unrest unleashed a fury of Red-baiting that allowed studio moguls to crush the union and seize control of the production process, with far-reaching consequences. This engrossing book probes the motives and actions of all the players to reveal the full story of the CSU strike and the resulting lockout of 1946. Gerald Horne draws extensively on primary materials and oral histories to document how limited a “threat” the Communist party actually posed in Hollywood, even as studio moguls successfully used the Red scare to undermine union clout, prevent film stars from supporting labor, and prove the moguls’ own patriotism. Horne also discloses that, unnoticed amid the turmoil, organized crime entrenched itself in management and labor, gaining considerable control over both the “product” and the profits of Hollywood. This research demonstrates that the CSU strike and lockout were a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, with consequences for everything from production values, to the kinds of stories told in films, to permanent shifts in the centers of power.
Download or read book How Newark Became Newark written by Brad R. Tuttle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-16 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in forty years, the story of one of America's most maligned cities is told in all its grit and glory. With its open-armed embrace of manufacturing, Newark, New Jersey, rode the Industrial Revolution to great prominence and wealth that lasted well into the twentieth century. In the postwar years, however, Newark experienced a perfect storm of urban troublesùpolitical corruption, industrial abandonment, white flight, racial conflict, crime, poverty. Cities across the United States found themselves in similar predicaments, yet Newark stands out as an exceptional case. Its saga reflects the rollercoaster ride of Everycity U.S.A., only with a steeper rise, sharper turns, and a much more dramatic plunge. How Newark Became Newark is a fresh, unflinching popular history that spans the city's epic transformation from a tiny Puritan village into a manufacturing powerhouse, on to its desperate struggles in the twentieth century and beyond. After World War II, unrest mounted as the minority community was increasingly marginalized, leading to the wrenching civic disturbances of the 1960s. Though much of the city was crippled for years, How Newark Became Newark is also a story of survival and hope. Today, a real estate revival and growing population are signs that Newark is once again in ascendance.
Download or read book A Gentleman and a Thief written by Dean Jobb and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief in this captivating Jazz Age true-crime caper about "the greatest jewel thief who ever lived" (Life Magazine), Arthur Barry, who charmed celebrities and millionaires—everyone from Rockefellers to members of the royal family—while simultaneously planning and executing the most audacious and lucrative heists of the 1920s. “A master of narrative nonfiction. In this mesmerizing tale about a Jazz Age gentlemanly thief, Jobb has found his own perfect jewel.” ―DAVID GRANN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon “An enthrallingly propulsive, unpredictably twisty biography of one of the most fascinating criminals of the 20th Century. I was hooked from the very first heist.” ―MICHAEL FINKEL, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Thief and The Stranger in the Woods A skilled con artist and one of the most successful burglars in history, Arthur Barry was adept at slipping in and out of bedrooms undetected, even when his victims slept only inches away. He became a folk hero, a gentleman bandit touted in the press as the “Prince of Thieves” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.” Think Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. In a span of seven years, Barry stole pearls, diamonds, and other precious gems worth almost $60 million today. Among his many victims were a Rockefeller, an heiress to the Woolworth Department Store fortune, an oil magnate, Wall Street bigwigs, a top executive of automotive giant General Motors, and a famous polo player. He befriended the Prince of Wales, Harry Houdini, and other luminaries. The rollicking, caper-filled rise and dramatic downfall of this master thief is a high-speed ride told in stylish prose. A Gentleman and a Thief is also a love story. Barry confessed to dozens of burglaries to protect his wife, Anna Blake (and was the prime suspect in scores of others on Long Island and across Westchester County). Sentenced to a twenty-five-year term, he staged a dramatic prison break—triggering a bloody inmates' riot—when Anna became seriously ill, so they could be together for a few more years as fugitives. Page-turning, escapist, and sparkling with insight into the allure of gemstones and our fascination with well-planned heists and the suave, clever criminals who pull them off, A Gentleman and a Thief is perfect for true crime fans who relish the exploits of con artists and high-class crooks.
Download or read book The Kosher Capones written by Joe Kraus and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kosher Capones tells the fascinating story of Chicago's Jewish gangsters from Prohibition into the 1980s. Author Joe Kraus traces these gangsters through the lives, criminal careers, and conflicts of Benjamin "Zuckie the Bookie" Zuckerman, last of the independent West Side Jewish bosses, and Lenny Patrick, eventual head of the Syndicate's "Jewish wing." These two men linked the early Jewish gangsters of the neighborhoods of Maxwell Street and Lawndale to the notorious Chicago Outfit that emerged from Al Capone's criminal confederation. Focusing on the murder of Zuckerman by Patrick, Kraus introduces us to the different models of organized crime they represented, a raft of largely forgotten Jewish gangsters, and the changing nature of Chicago's political corruption. Hard-to-believe anecdotes of corrupt politicians, seasoned killers, and in-over-their-heads criminal operators spotlight the magnitude and importance of Jewish gangsters to the story of Windy City mob rule. With an eye for the dramatic, The Kosher Capones takes us deep inside a hidden society and offers glimpses of the men who ran the Jewish criminal community in Chicago for more than sixty years.
Download or read book American Studies International written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Garden State Gangland written by Scott M. Deitche and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-12-08 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wiseguys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that’s over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California. And many of the stories have never been told. Deitche weaves his narrative through significant, as well as some lesser-known, mob figures who were vital components in the underworld machine. New Jersey’s organized crime history has been one of the most colorful in the country, serving as the home of some of the most powerful, as well as below-the-radar, mobsters in the Country. And though overshadowed by the emphasis on New York City, the mob and New Jersey have, over the years, become synonymous, in both pop culture and in law enforcement. But for all the press that has been dedicated to the mob and New Jersey, for all the law enforcement activity against the mob, and for all the pop culture references, there has never truly been an examination of the rise of the mob in New Jersey from a historical perspective. Until now. In Garden State Gangland, Scott M. Deitche sets the historical record straight by providing the first overall history of the mob in New Jersey, from the early turn of the century Black Hand gangs to the present, and looks at how influential they were was, not only to goings-on the Garden State but across the New York metro region and the country as a whole.
Download or read book American Dictators written by Steven Hart and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One man was tongue-tied and awkward around women, in many ways a mama's boy at heart, although his reputation for thuggery was well earned. The other was a playboy, full of easy charm and ready jokes, his appetite for high living a matter of public record. One man tolerated gangsters and bootleggers as long as they paid their dues to his organization. The other was effectively a gangster himself, so crooked that he hosted a national gathering of America's most ruthless killers. One man never drank alcohol. The other, from all evidence, seldom drank anything else. American Dictators is the dual biography of two of America’s greatest political bosses: Frank Hague and Enoch “Nucky” Johnson. Packed with compelling information and written in an informal, sometimes humorous style, the book shows Hague and Johnson at the peak of their power and the strength of their political machines during the years of Prohibition and the Great Depression. Steven Hart compares how both men used their influence to benefit and punish the local citizenry, amass huge personal fortunes, and sometimes collaborate to trounce their enemies. Similar in their ruthlessness, both men were very different in appearance and temperament. Hague, the mayor of Jersey City, intimidated presidents and wielded unchallenged power for three decades. He never drank and was happily married to his wife for decades. He also allowed gangsters to run bootlegging and illegal gambling operations as long as they paid protection money. Johnson, the political boss of Atlantic City, and the inspiration for the hit HBO series Boardwalk Empire, presided over corruption as well, but for a shorter period of time. He was notorious for his decadent lifestyle. Essentially a gangster himself, Johnson hosted the infamous Atlantic City conference that fostered the growth of organized crime. Both Hague and Johnson shrewdly integrated otherwise disenfranchised groups into their machines and gave them a stake in political power. Yet each failed to adapt to changing demographics and circumstances. In American Dictators, Hart paints a balanced portrait of their accomplishments and their failures.
