Download or read book Miami Babylon written by Gerald Posner and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, in all its neon-colored, cocaine-fueled glory, is the never-before-told story of the making of Miami Beach. Gerald Posner, author of the groundbreaking investigations Case Closed and Why America Slept, has uncovered the hair-raising political-financial-criminal history of the Beach and reveals a tale that, in the words of one character, "makes Scarface look like a documentary." From its beginnings in the 1890s, the Beach has been a place made by visionaries and hustlers. During Prohibition, Al Capone had to muscle into its bootlegging and gambling businesses. After December 1941, when the Beach was the training ground for half a million army recruits, even the war couldn't stop the party. After a short postwar boom, the city's luck gave out. The big hotels went bankrupt, the crime rate rose, and the tourists moved on to Disney World and the Caribbean. Even after the Beach hosted both national political conventions in 1972, nobody would have imagined that this sandy backwater of run-down hotels and high crime would soon become one of the country's most important cultural centers. But in 1981, 125,000 Cubans arrived by the boatload. The empty streets of South Beach, lined with dilapidated Art Deco hotels, were about to be changed irrevocably by the culture of money that moved in behind cocaine and crime. Posner takes us inside the intertwined lives of politicians, financiers, nightclub owners, and real estate developers who have fed the Beach's unquenchable desire for wealth, flash, and hype: the German playboy who bought the entire tip of South Beach with $100 million of questionable money; the mayoral candidate who said, "If you can't take their money, drink their liquor, mess with their women, and then vote against them, you aren't cut out for politics"; the Staten Island thug who became king of the South Beach nightclubs only to have his empire unravel and saved himself by testifying against the mob; the campaign manager who calls himself the "Prince of Darkness" and got immunity from prosecution in a fraud case by cooperating with the FBI against his colleagues; and the former Washington, D.C., developer who played hardball with city hall and became the Beach's first black hotel owner. From the mid-level coke dealers and their suitcases of cash to the questionable billions that financed the ocean-view condo towers, the Beach has seen it all. Posner's singular report tells the real story of how this small urban beach community was transformed into a world-class headquarters for American culture within a generation. It is a story built by dreamers and schemers. And a steroid-injected cautionary tale.
Download or read book Alas Babylon written by Pat Frank and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic apocalyptic novel that stunned the world.
Download or read book Hotel Scarface written by Roben Farzad and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wild, true story of the Mutiny, the hotel and club that embodied the decadence of Miami’s cocaine cowboys heyday—and an inspiration for the blockbuster film, Scarface... In the seventies, coke hit Miami with the full force of a hurricane, and no place attracted dealers and dopers like Coconut Grove’s Mutiny at Sailboat Bay. Hollywood royalty, rock stars, and models flocked to the hotel’s club to order bottle after bottle of Dom and to snort lines alongside narcos, hit men, and gunrunners, all while marathon orgies burned upstairs in elaborate fantasy suites. Amid the boatloads of powder and cash reigned the new kings of Miami: three waves of Cuban immigrants vying to dominate the trafficking of one of the most lucrative commodities ever known to man. But as the kilos—and bodies—began to pile up, the Mutiny became target number one for law enforcement. Based on exclusive interviews and never-before-seen documents, Hotel Scarface is a portrait of a city high on excess and greed, an extraordinary work of investigative journalism offering an unprecedented view of the rise and fall of cocaine—and the Mutiny—in Miami.
Download or read book Running with Raven written by Laura Lee Huttenbach and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1975, Robert “Raven” Kraft made a New Year’s Resolution to run eight miles on Miami’s South Beach each evening. Over 125,000 miles and seven hurricanes later, he has not missed one sunset—and he has changed the lives of thousands who have run with him. From all fifty states and over 85 countries, across all age groups and backgrounds, people come to run with Raven. In the process they find friendship, inspiration—and a nickname. Among them is author Laura Lee “White Lightning” Huttenbach, who has logged over a thousand miles of Raven Runs. Here she explores the stories of dozens of others about why they started running with Raven—and why they keep coming back. Raven is a legend of the running world, and his story is an invaluable reminder that the journey means little without the connections forged along the way. “Raven left an indelible impression upon me, as he has countless others. Raven, long may you run.” —Dean Karnazes, New York Times bestselling author of Ultramarathon Man “An inspiring tale of unbreakable discipline and one-of-a-kind endurance.” —Gerald Posner, New York Times bestselling author of Miami Babylon “Raven’s tale of perseverance, understanding, and courage will inspire anyone.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Fool s Paradise written by Steven Gaines and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture. Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping. Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords. From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance. Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.
Download or read book 18 Billion written by Jack Gresham and published by BookPros, LLC. This book was released on 2009 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Washington, D.C., a cell of Afghan terrorists-armed with a nuclear weapon-conspire to rob the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of 18 billion dollars. They plan to fund and curry favor with Mohammed of Babylon, an international negotiator and proponent of peaceful jihad who is rumored to be the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam. Mohammed, shocked to find himself the center of religious extremism, attempts to right the wrong done to the United States without betraying the trust of his people.Meanwhile, the government's investigation into the terrorist cell behind the threat uncovers a more frightening plot. An international corporation called Global Consultant Ltd. appears to be funding and manufacturing global terrorism for their own purposes. The corporation, driven by greed rather than ideology, has the feds wondering how far their influence reaches and what it will take to counter the terrorism already set in motion.
Download or read book Cubans an Epic Journey written by Sam Verdeja and published by Reedy Press LLC. This book was released on 2011 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of more than thirty essays by renowned scholars, historians, journalists, and media professionals that portray the experience of Cubans exiled in the United States and other countries in the last sixty years.
Download or read book Case Closed written by Gerald Posner and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist: “By far the most lucid and compelling account . . . of what probably did happen in Dallas—and what almost certainly did not.” —The New York Times Book Review The Kennedy assassination has reverberated for five decades, with tales of secret plots, multiple killers, and government cabals often overshadowing the event itself. As Gerald Posner writes, “Fifty years after the assassination, the biggest casualty has been the truth.” In this first-ever digital edition of his classic work, updated with a special comment for the fiftieth anniversary, Posner lays to rest all of the convoluted conspiracy theories—concerning the mafia, a second shooter, and the CIA—that have obscured over the decades what really happened in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Drawing from official sources and dozens of interviews, and filled with powerful historical detail, Case Closed is a vivid and straightforward account that stands as one of the most authoritative books on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Download or read book Welcome to Fairyland written by Julio Capó Jr. and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poised on the edge of the United States and at the center of a wider Caribbean world, today's Miami is marketed as an international tourist hub that embraces gender and sexual difference. As Julio Capo Jr. shows in this fascinating history, Miami's transnational connections reveal that the city has been a queer borderland for over a century. In chronicling Miami's queer past from its 1896 founding through 1940, Capo shows the multifaceted ways gender and sexual renegades made the city their own. Drawing from a multilingual archive, Capo unearths the forgotten history of "fairyland," a marketing term crafted by boosters that held multiple meanings for different groups of people. In viewing Miami as a contested colonial space, he turns our attention to migrants and immigrants, tourism, and trade to and from the Caribbean--particularly the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti--to expand the geographic and methodological parameters of urban and queer history. Recovering the world of Miami's old saloons, brothels, immigration checkpoints, borders, nightclubs, bars, and cruising sites, Capo makes clear how critical gender and sexual transgression is to understanding the city and the broader region in all its fullness.
Download or read book Beyond the Velvet Rope Club Babylon Book 1 Mills Boon Spice written by Tiffany Ashley and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to Club Babylon: where the A-list VIPs come to play Scoring a gig at Miami’s Club Babylon is a fantasy come true for New York promoter Thandie Shaw. The hottest club on the strip is a magnet for major South Beach movers and shakers. And Thandie’s about to meet the biggest player of them all.
Download or read book God s Bankers written by Gerald Posner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deeply reported, New York Times bestselling exposé of the money and the clerics-turned-financiers at the heart of the Vatican—the world’s biggest, most powerful religious institution—from an acclaimed journalist with “exhaustive research techniques” (The New York Times). From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, God’s Bankers traces the political intrigue of the Catholic Church in “a meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican’s legendary, enabling secrecy” (Kirkus Reviews). Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine financial entanglements across the world. Told through 200 years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the Popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in one of the world’s most influential organizations. God’s Bankers has it all: a revelatory and astounding saga marked by poisoned business titans, murdered prosecutors, and mysterious deaths written off as suicides; a carnival of characters from Popes and cardinals, financiers and mobsters, kings and prime ministers; and a set of moral and political circumstances that clarify not only the church’s aims and ambitions, but reflect the larger tensions of more recent history. And Posner even looks to the future to surmise if Pope Francis can succeed where all his predecessors failed: to overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s Machiavellian inner court and to rein in the excesses of its seemingly uncontrollable financial quagmire. “As exciting as a mystery thriller” (Providence Journal), this book reveals with extraordinary precision how the Vatican has evolved from a foundation of faith to a corporation of extreme wealth and power.
Download or read book Killing the Dream written by Gerald Posner and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deep dive into James Earl Ray’s role in the national tragedy: “Superb . . . a model of investigation . . . as gripping as a first-class detective story” (The New York Times). On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, by a single assassin’s bullet. A career criminal named James Earl Ray was seen fleeing from a rooming house that overlooked the hotel balcony from where King was cut down. An international manhunt ended two months later with Ray’s capture. Though Ray initially pled guilty, he quickly recanted and for the rest of his life insisted he was an unwitting pawn in a grand conspiracy. In Killing the Dream, expert investigative reporter Gerald Posner reexamines Ray and the evidence, even tracking down the mystery man Ray claimed was the conspiracy’s mastermind. Beginning with an authoritative biography of Ray’s life, and continuing with a gripping account of the assassination and its aftermath, Posner cuts through phony witnesses, false claims, and a web of misinformation surrounding that tragic spring day in 1968. He puts Ray’s conspiracy theory to rest and ultimately manages to disclose what really happened the day King was murdered.
Download or read book Impressions of South Beach written by Carol Schaller Carmichael and published by Carol Schaller Carmichael. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paintings of South Beach by Carol Schaller Carmichael -- the Art Deco and Miami Modern architecture and vintage cars. 58 full color images. The paintings are accompanied by captions describing a little of the history of the buildings, the architect, and a brief story in some cases. The book is organized from South to North along Ocean Drive and along Collins so that it could be used as a walking tour. http: //www.leesidefarmphotography.com
Download or read book Babylon Unveiled written by Jennifer Breedon DeMaster and published by . This book was released on 2020-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2019, the United States withdrew from the Syrian War and took out ISIS leader Baghdadi. By January 3, 2020 the most dangerous shadow terrorist leader, Iran's Qasem Soleimani, had been neutralized in Baghdad. News narratives quickly painted both Baghdadi and Soleimani as respected leaders while simultaneously decrying the Kurds in Syria. But what is the real story behind these ground-shifting Middle East events? Could they have been some of the best Middle East policy decisions we have seen in America's history?This book contains eyewitness accounts and years of research to expose stories that have been concealed from the public including Iran and US shadow deals, as well as the fake news narratives that have kept the Western public blind for so long.Become a Middle East expert on regions and shatter the fake news narratives from the region with this eyewitness account that will expose what's been hidden from the Western public. Follow one American Christian woman's eyewitness experience into the heart of the Middle East. Attorney Jennifer Breedon DeMaster exposes the lies about the Middle East. Learn about what led to the rise of ISIS, who has really been protecting the Christians, and which feared Muslim countries may house some of the greatest hope for followers of Jesus.Jennifer walks the reader through her eyewitness experiences in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey, and other countries that most Americans wouldn't dare venture to. What can the recent events in the Middle East mean for our future? Who exactly are the Kurds and were they portrayed right from those still in Syria? Can we actually trust any news story on the Middle East, even ones as seemingly "clear cut" as the Khashoggi murder? Could Saudi Arabia and Egypt become forces for good? Could the Kurds become a blossoming democratic powerhouse to protect Evangelicals and Christian converts? Is there hope in the Middle East?This book will help answer those questions for you and will truly help anyone without "Middle East" expertise to understand exactly what's going on and who or why it has been kept from us.
Download or read book The Prince of Paradise written by John Glatt and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Novack, Jr. was born into a life of luxury and opulence. Heir to the legendary Fontainebleau hotel, he spent his childhood surrounded by some of the world's biggest stars, including Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Elvis Presley, and Ann-Margret, who performed regularly at the Fontainebleau's La Ronde Room. He sat by while his parents entertained presidents and movie stars, as they reigned over Miami Beach in the ‘50's and ‘60's, and when the family business went sour he became wealthy in his own right, founding a multi-million dollar business using connections he made at the Fontainebleau. But Ben, Jr.'s luxurious, celebrity-studded lifestyle would end in another hotel room—a thousand miles away from the one where he grew up—when police found him bound up in duct tape, beaten to death. Seven years earlier, police found Novack in an eerily similar situation—when his wife Narcy duct-taped him to a chair for twenty-four hours and robbed him. Claiming it was a sex game, he never pressed charges and never followed through with a divorce. Now prosecutors claimed Narcy let the vicious killers into the room and watched as they beat her husband with dumbbells. They also suspected she was involved in the horrendous death of Novack's mother, just three months before. But it would be Narcy's own daughter who implicated her to the police. John Glatt tells the whole story of this twisted case of passion, perversion, and paradise lost, in Prince of Paradise.
Download or read book Blood and Smoke written by Charles Leerhsen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred years ago, 40 cars lined up for the first Indianapolis 500. We are still waiting to find out who won. The Indy 500 was created to showcase the controversial new sport of automobile racing, which was sweeping the country. Daring young men were driving automobiles at the astonishing speed of 75 miles per hour, testing themselves and their vehicles. With no seat belts, hard helmets or roll bars, the dangers were enormous. When the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened in 1909, seven people were killed, some of them spectators. Oil-slicked surfaces, clouds of smoke, exploding tires, and flying grit all made driving extremely hazardous, especially with the open-cockpit, windshield-less vehicles. Bookmakers offered bets not only on who might win but who might survive. But this book is about more than a race--it is the story of America at the dawn of the automobile age, a country in love with speed, danger, and spectacle.--From publisher description.
Download or read book The Year of Dangerous Days written by Nicholas Griffin and published by 37 Ink. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of The Wire, the harrowing story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America’s most bustling cities—rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality—from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin Miami, Florida, famed for its blue skies and sandy beaches, is one of the world’s most popular vacation destinations, with nearly twenty-three million tourists visiting annually. But few people have any idea how this unofficial capital of Latin America came to be. The Year of Dangerous Days is a fascinating chronicle of a pivotal but forgotten year in American history. With a cast that includes iconic characters such as Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, and Janet Reno, this slice of history is brought to life through intertwining personal stories. At the core, there’s Edna Buchanan, a reporter for the Miami Herald who breaks the story on the wrongful murder of a black man and the shocking police cover-up; Captain Marshall Frank, the hardboiled homicide detective tasked with investigating the murder; and Mayor Maurice Ferré, the charismatic politician who watches the case, and the city, fall apart. On a roller coaster of national politics and international diplomacy, these three figures cross paths as their city explodes in one of the worst race riots in American history as more than 120,000 Cuban refugees land south of Miami, and as drug cartels flood the city with cocaine and infiltrate all levels of law enforcement. In a battle of wills, Buchanan has to keep up with the 150 percent murder rate increase; Captain Frank has to scrub and rebuild his homicide bureau; and Mayor Ferré must find a way to reconstruct his smoldering city. Against all odds, they persevere, and a stronger, more vibrant Miami begins to emerge. But the foundation of this new Miami—partially built on corruption and drug money—will have severe ramifications for the rest of the country. Deeply researched and covering many timely issues including police brutality, immigration, and the drug crisis, The Year of Dangerous Days is both a clarion call and a re-creation story of one of America’s most iconic cities.
