Download or read book Silence on Monte Sole written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Italian mountain villagers who lived on Monte Sole trying to survive the war and the horror that overtook them in September and October, when the retreating German army massacred 1800 of the citizens of Monte Sole. The mountain--a 2000-foot peak in central Italy, some fifteen miles south of Bologna--had been a haven for Partisans. For this reason the Germans mistrusted the villagers, but the ugly rastrellamento (purge) occurred more by chance than vengeance: Monte Sole happened to be located on the main route of the retreating army, and the SS deemed it necessary to ""neutralize"" the mountain. In operational terms, this meant mass-murder. The book is based on the accounts of survivors, the few official records, courtroom testimony, and visible scars. It begins with the postman on his rounds, and by this device visits with most of the contadini (tenant farmers) of the region, the priests, the storekeeper, the elders. They are simple people, family-oriented rather than nationalistic, and often likably eccentric. It is their very individuality that makes the ensuing chapters on the mass-murder so effective. Compelling, compassionate--rarely sentimental--a stirring book. Jack Olsen is the award-winning author of thirty-three books published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen's journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Guild's Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "an American treasure."

Download or read book Silence on Monte Sole written by Jack Olsen and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-03 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A genuine classic. Not to be missed. By one of the masters of nonfiction. Monte Sole - Mountain of the Sun - had the bad luck to lie on the main route of withdrawal of the retreating German armies in autumn 1944. As the allied advance stormed up Italy to the very shadow of Monte Sole, Axis frustration over their retreat and the harassing Italian partisans reached its peak. With full authorization of Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, and with an infusion of dread SS reinforcements, the Germans determined to neutralize Monte Sole. The result was, in Kesselring's chilling words, "a war operation". Jack Olsen re-creates the unspeakable three-day butchery of innocent Italian civilians that ranked among the blackest atrocities in the history of man's inhumanities to man.Kirkus Reviews: The story of the Italian mountain villagers who lived on Monte Sole trying to survive the war and the horror that overtook them on September 29, 30 and October 1, 1944, when the retreating German army massacred 1800 of the citizens of Monte Sole. Olsen, a writer with a penchant for mountains (The Climb to Hell), tells the story well. The mountain--a 2000-foot peak in central Italy, some fifteen miles south of Bologna--had been a haven for Partisans. For this reason the Germans mistrusted the villagers, but the ugly rastrellamento (purge) occurred more by chance than vengeance: Monte Sole happened to be located on the main route of the retreating army, and the SS deemed it necessary to ""neutralize"" the mountain. In operational terms, this meant mass-murder. The book is based on the accounts of survivors, the few official records, courtroom testimony, and visible scars. It begins with the postman on his rounds, and by this device visits with most of the contadini (tenant farmers) of the region, the priests, the storekeeper, the elders. They are simple people, family-oriented rather than nationalistic, and often likably eccentric. It is their very individuality that makes the ensuing chapters on the mass-murder so effective. Compelling, compassionate--rarely sentimental--a stirring book.The award-winning author of thirty-three books, Jack Olsen's books have been published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen's journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild's Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. He was listed in Who's Who in America since 1968 and in Who's Who in the World since 1987. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "an American treasure."Olsen was described as "the dean of true crime authors" by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and "the master of true crime" by the Detroit Free Press and Newsday. Publishers Weekly called him "the best true crime writer around." His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as "a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike."Olsen is a two-time winner in the Best Fact Crime category of the Mystery Writer's of America, Edgar award.

Download or read book The Last Coyote written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the extermination of the coyote – a shrewd wily, solitary scavenger – that serves as the central theme of Jack Olsen’s ragingly indignant, beautifully written and deeply moving book, perhaps the most gripping and important work of its kind. Poisoned, hunted, a bounty placed on their heads, their pelts nailed to fence posts, the coyotes symbolize the heartless and brutal way in which man has made the west his own as if nature had no place. Jack Olsen describes how, in the vast stretches of the America West, the wildlife is being systematically exterminated for the profit of ranchers and stockmen…with the cooperation of government agencies. Hardest hit of all the animals are the great predators – wildcats, wolves, bears, mountain lions, coyotes – all now on the verge of extinction. By decimating those species which seem to him inconvenient or wasteful or unprofitable, man has laid a waste his own heritage, sown the seeds of a poisoned earth, a dead land…and gone far along in the destruction of his own humanity.

Download or read book Annihilation written by Mark Levene and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 984 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the years leading up to the First World War to the aftermath of the Second, Europe experienced an era of genocide. As well as the Holocaust, this period also witnessed the Armenian genocide in 1915, mass killings in Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia, and a host of further ethnic cleansings in Anatolia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Crisis of Genocide seeks to integrate these genocidal events into a single, coherent history. Over two volumes, Mark Levene demonstrates how the relationship between geography, nation, and power came to play a key role in the emergence of genocide in a collapsed or collapsing European imperial zone - the Rimlands - and how the continuing geopolitical contest for control of these Eastern European or near-European regions destabilised relationships between diverse and multifaceted ethnic communities who traditionally had lived side by side. An emergent pattern of toxicity can also be seen in the struggles for regional dominance as pursued by post-imperial states, nation-states, and would-be states. Volume II: Annihilation covers the period from 1939 to 1953, particularly focussing on the Second World War, and its aftermath, the Holocaust and its lasting impact, and the latter part of the Stalinist regime. Levene demonstrates that while the attempted Nazi mass murder of the entirety of European Jewry represents the most thoroughgoing and extreme consequence of efforts aimed at political and social reformulation of the Rimlands' arena in particular, the accumulation and concentration of genocidal violence against many 'minority' groups would suggest that anti-Semitism or racism alone is insufficient to provide a comprehensive explanation for genocide.

Download or read book Salt of the Earth written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his twelve-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied. With a new introduction by bestselling true crime author M. William Phelps. Tips and sightings poured in as lawmen and volunteers combed the Cascades forest in the biggest search on Northwest history. Years passed with no sight of the blue-eyed girl or the bright clothes she'd worn on the day she disappeared, but Elaine remained undaunted. Salt of the Earth is the true story of how one woman fought and triumphed over life-shattering violence and how she healed her family-and herself. Salt of the Earth is the true story of a courageous woman who survived a hellish twentieth-century nightmare. Mob violence, injustice, kidnapping, murder, and suicide were the black holes in the awful astronomy of Elaine Gere's life. Somehow she had to summon the courage to endure: to honor her beloved dead and to rebuild the shattered lives of the sons who depended on her strength. Jack Olsen has been lauded for his psychological insights into the most violent criminals in such previous masterworks as Doc, The Misbegotten Son, and Predator, but he has never overlooked their victims. By viewing the world through the eyes of Elaine Gere and her devastated family, he finds the core values that enabled them not only to survive and flourish, but, in the end, to triumph. Gilbert Taylor: In the annals of humanity, the Gere family is unexceptional and ordinary--unless one looks as closely at their lives as Olsen does. A boomer-age couple, Joe and Elaine Gere move between California and Idaho a dozen times on their roller coaster ride of solvency and bankruptcy and have three children. Much the steadier spouse, energetic Elaine always manages to land a clerical federal job wherever Joe moves the family. The wanderlust ensues from Joe's first career misfortune, as a cop disabled during a melee with a mob. His relatives thought that incident started his slide toward suicide, and his addictive (regrets of hitting her and promises to reform) abuse of Elaine demonstrates the complexity of Joe's insidious demons. But he holds on, Elaine remaining loyal, until another bolt from the blue--the kidnapping and murder of their 12-year-old daughter. Here Olsen is at his dispassionate, yet concerned, best, introducing the subplot of the suspect's life (a wife beater), the course of the investigation, and the ultimate denoument of the case. In this mass-media age, many women will identify with, and perhaps be inspirited by, Olsen's fine chronicle of the Gere family.

Download or read book Hidden Tuscany written by John Keahey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hidden Tuscany vividly displays the coastal areas of Tuscany, a territory often overlooked by visitors to Italy eager to see Chianti, Florence or Siena. Veteran journalist and Italophile John Keahey points out the keen distinctions that the western cities maintain: in food, lifestyle, and the way its artists are paving new directions in art that differ mightily from the Renaissance-rich interior. Keahey interviews sculptors and their artigiani, craftsmen and women who toil in the marble studios, eating their lunch in workers' clubs and cafes. From beach locales such as Viareggio, to Livorno (which has Venetian-style canals), modern Orbetello and the seven islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, Keahey reveals beaches rich in European visitors and magnificent medieval villages that rarely see outsiders. The larger, better-known Tuscan coastal city Pisa can even surprise a curious visitor with places of solitude. Keahey's previous books on Italy have always received widespread and complimentary review coverage--garnering praise for the depth of his research and his comprehensive analysis. Travelers instantly flock to books about Tuscany, and this one promotes towns and villages that are often missed by tourists, letting readers in on these 'secret' destinations. For armchair travelers or vacation seekers, Hidden Tuscany puts a very human face on the region in Keahey's discussion of food, history and language. And the result is mesmerizing"--

Download or read book The Black Athlete A Shameful Story written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Olsen’s blunt depiction of the shameful treatment of black athletes in the 1960’s. A view of the sport most Americans refused to see during a time of complacency and pervasive racial crisis in America. Black collegiate athletes were often dehumanized, exploited and discarded. Recruited for their skill then lionized on the field and ostracized on campus. The world of professional sports offered black athlete’s opportunity but not equality. Positions that carry authority and responsibility were typically labeled “white only”. Olsen interviewed sociologists, black community leaders, coaches, AD’s and numerous athletes. This ground-breaking and controversial report sparked nationwide reforms when it was covered in a five-part series published by Sports Illustrated in 1968.

Download or read book The Secret of Fire Five written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fire 5 is a special roving unit, which comes to the aid of other fire companies that run into trouble all over the city. Its story is told by one of the men of the unit, Charly Sprockett, and from the very first scene Jack Olsen hooks the reader with his remarkable ability to write dialogue that rings true and to create characters who jump to life. We live with the men in the station, take drills with them, hear them swap funny stories, marital woes and sexual adventures. We watch them razz the probies, initiate their first fireperson, Lulu Ann Tompkins, and unite in common hatred of their tyrannical new battalion chief, H. Walker Slater. We see them crawl through burning buildings, dragging out people trapped within. We join the hilarity when they come to the rescue of a four-hundred-pound woman who gets stuck in her bathtub, and we root for Charly as he climbs out on an overpass over a freeway to talk a desperate young girl out of leaping to her death. But beneath the ribald humor lies an urgent suspense story. Somewhere in the city lurks the firefighter's deadliest enemy – a vicious arsonist who has been pouring gasoline over derelicts and setting them aflame.

Download or read book Sweet Street written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poignant, first-hand expose of working and surviving in the dark underworld of seedy bars and strip clubs in the early 1970's. Jack Olsen's gritty depiction of street life as told by hustlers, pimps, strippers, waitresses, cops, junkies, bartenders, bouncers and club owners. The dynamic mix of tough and competitive individuals performing various roles in a social environment that has its own code and hierarchy. How did they get here? How do they survive? Their stories range from startling to shocking to touching. Sweet Street is an exceptional documentary which provides the reader with a much greater understanding of the complexity of 1970's street life from the perspective of those directly involved.

Download or read book Night Watch written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman lies dead, strangled by a killer still prowling the sweltering run-down neighborhood. The young wife of a police lieutenant receives threatening phone calls; the precinct’s patrol cars are sabotaged; even the puppies the officers have adopted as mascots are savagely slain. It looks like there's a psycho on the loose with a vendetta against the cops. And then the widow of a precinct cop is found horribly murdered. The signature of the first crime is on this one. But a deadly new element has been added – another murderer is imitating the first one’s methods. Olsen’s ear is uncanny – the language, the psychology of cops rings absolutely true with all the brutal authenticity of Joseph Wambaugh. He makes them intimate, real, alive -- the burly, 37-year-old watch commander, Lt. Packer Lind, a dedicated cop; his adoring 21-year-old wife Amnee; Precinct Commander Julius Singletary, 47 and estranged from his wandering wife Agate; Sergeant Turk Molnar, the prototype of a big, dumb, good-natured flatfoot; the lovable smart-ass Artie Siegi, sex-driven Billy Mains and his new patrol car sidekick, bosomy Mary Rob Maki; and their patrolmen pals – including Gerald Yount, 24, whose wife Darlene has been cruelly unfaithful, precipitating a nightmare that brings Olsen's novel to its thunderous resolution. Night Watch is a superb evocation of the real world of big city police today. It is a rare combination of action and a novel of character. In telling this riveting story, Jack Olsen portrays a memorable man in Watch Commander Packer Lind, along with marvelous creations of the characters of the cops under his command and their wives and the pressured lives they lead. For more than a year, Olsen studied policemen at close range: on their beats, visiting them in their homes, joining in their off-duty revelries, riding shotgun as they chased speeders and burglars and killers, walking side by side with them into the bars and back alleys and tanks and dives and sometimes onto the killing grounds of this most dangerous of occupations. After sharing their pressure-cooker lives, Olsen calls them “the most undervalued members of our society: good and decent men, for the most part, whose stresses and torments are only dimly understood by the public they serve. They live on the edge of a knife-blade, and they pay the price in broken homes, tortured lives, and uncertain futures. The wonder isn’t that there are so many bad cops. The wonder is that there are so few.”

Download or read book Field Marshal Kesselring written by Andrew Sangster and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postwar analyses of Germany’s last ever Field-Marshal, Albert Kesselring, have tended to be sympathetic and even adulatory in their appraisals. This book raises fundamental questions about their legitimacy, and challenges the widely held belief that he was one of the “greatest commanders to emerge” from the last World War. It illustrates that this reputation has been bolstered by the need to conceal the ineptitude and inexperience of Allied opposition. Often seen as a benign and good-natured patrician, the study shows that he was deeply implicated in the Nazi preparation for war, that he was guilty of serious war crimes, and that he committed perjury to save himself at the expense of a junior general. The book also highlights that the SS became a scapegoat for the whole Nazi regime, that he became a pawn in Cold War politics which assisted his release from execution and prison, that he survived the denazification process because it became a nonsense, that those who hoped he would assume a leadership in postwar Germany were disappointed by his inability to accept the new Europe, and that he died in ignominy. The book is a re-appraisal of Kesselring and demythologises many deeply held concepts of the period between 1930 and 1960.

Download or read book Buffalo Soldiers in Italy written by Hondon B. Hargrove and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 92nd Infantry ("Buffalo") Division was the last segregated (all-black) U.S. Army division and the only black division to fight in World War II in Europe. The few media references to the division have reflected generally unfavorable contemporary evaluations by white commanders. The present work reflects an analysis of numerous records and interviews that refute the negative impressions and demonstrate that these 13,500 soldiers gained their share of victories under hardships no others were expected to meet.

Download or read book The Misbegotten Son written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little Artie Shawcross bullied classmates, insulted teachers, started fires, tortured animals, and roved the woods of New York's hardscrabble North Country with imaginary friends, talking in a high squawk. He also scored top grades, excelled in sports and shared his money and toys with the children who ridiculed him. From the second grade on, he was subjected to psychiatric examination, regularly confounding the experts. Years later, while serving in Vietnam, Arthur John Shawcross wrote bloodcurdling letters about his battlefield ordeals, then returned to Watertown to commit a string of arsons and burglaries. He served two years in prison, was paroled to his respectable parents - and murdered a boy and a girl. Back in the penitentiary, he proved as enigmatic as ever. Some counselors saw him as a Frankenstein monster, beyond hope, irredeemable. To others he was a troubled young man who could be saved. No two psychiatrists seemed to agree. Shawcross served fifteen years, then conned a parole board into an early release. He settled in Binghamton, but angry citizens learned of his bloody history and ran him out of town. After two smaller communities turned him away, desperate parole authorities finally smuggled the child-killer into Rochester in the dead of night - neglecting to alert the local police. Soon the corpses started turning up, locked in winter ice, covered by reeds in swamps, floating in streams. The homicidal pedophile had changed his M.O., this time murdering diminutive women. As the body count grew, Rochester streets swarmed with police, and still the serial killer managed to snare his tenth victim, then his eleventh. Amazon.com Accounts of more famous serial killers like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer may have ghoulish entertainment value, but I agree with writer Darcy O'Brien that this meticulously factual study of child sex-murderer Arthur Shawcross "comes closer to capturing the psychology of a serial killer than anything else I've ever read." The strength of this book (semi-finalist for a 1994 Edgar Award) comes first from the quality of the materials--including first-person interviews with the killer's wives, girlfriends, co-workers, police officers, therapists, and even a prostitute who "played dead" for Shawcross--and second, from Olsen's ability to weave the information into a highly readable story that reveals, above all, the ineffectiveness of our system of rehabilitation and parole. From Publishers Weekly An experienced and skilled writer, Olsen ( Predator ) proves himself equal to the formidable task of studying serial killer Arthur Shawcross. Born in 1945 in upstate New York, Shawcross was perceived as different even in childhood (his classmates dubbed him "Oddie," and elementary school officials called for mental health evaluations). In the early '70s he murdered two children and was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison; he served less than 15 years before he was paroled in 1987. He was difficult to place--townspeople drove him out as soon as his past became known. After three such episodes, parole officials sent him surreptitiously to Rochester, N.Y., where he killed at least 11 prostitutes. He was arrested in 1990 and eventually sentenced to 250 years in prison. During the trial, he claimed that he had been physically and sexually abused by his mother (untrue, the authorities concluded) and that he had committed horrible atrocities in Vietnam (probably untrue). He did not fit the classic pattern of the sociopath, nor did he seem either schizophrenic or paranoid. It remained for psychiatrist Richard Kraus to hypothesize that physiology was the basis for Shawcross's behavior--he diagnosed Shawcross as suffering from a metabolic ailment known as pyroluria and an abnormal genetic constitution. Told by Olsen with contributions from others affected by Shawcross's crimes, the story is a triumph of true-crime writing.

Download or read book Massy s Game written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massy was big, over 8’2”, and still growing, the biggest man in pro basketball. No one thought it possible a man that big could move – could run and jump and shoot and rebound. But, before his first year was out, he became a legend, as well as a threat to the game. No one likes a giant; no one roots for Goliath. Cursed by irate fans, elbowed and punched by competing players, he is universally despised. What drives him on? What is in his past that drives him to continue dragging himself up and down the court when he would rather be playing the piano? What about the father that won’t stay off the bottle? And the little girl with the flute? As the season nears its ultimate close, the fury and tension mount. No one can stop the big man even though he doesn’t have all the moves and shots. No one and nothing. Beating the backboards, pounding slam-dunks so hard the rim shakes, pulling down rebounds a yard above the rim, blocking shots from ten feet away. He is a one-man wrecking crew, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the fans hate him, the opposing team hates him, and the officials hate him. Massy obliterates the opposition almost single-handedly. But the more shots he blocks, the greater the national hysteria. The book surges on to a screaming apocalyptic ending as unexpected as it is inevitable. If opposing players can’t stop him there are other means available. An original and fast-breaking sports novel that makes a strong and provocative comment on our entire society.

Download or read book In Love and War Kiwi soldiers romantic encounters written by Susan Jacobs and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When New Zealand forces arrived in Italy following the 1943 Armistice with the Allied forces, it was inevitable they would mingle with the local population. The Italians opened their homes and hearts to the New Zealand soldiers who delighted in finding young Italian signorinas everywhere. In Love and War tells of the liaisons and love affairs of New Zealand soldiers and their Italian sweethearts during World War Two. For some the result was marriage, leading to a new and often strained life for the Italian war brides on the other side of the world. For others, their wartime romance ended in heartbreaking separation when the Kiwi soldiers were posted elsewhere or returned home. Unknowingly, some left behind children who would grow up without ever meeting their natural fathers. While the New Zealand commanding officers did their very best to curtail fraternisation between Kiwi soldiers and the civilian population, for servicemen starved of female company relationships were easy to fall into. These touching stories of their romantic wartime encounters reveal the human side of war.

Download or read book Give a Boy a Gun written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war between society and the antisocial personality has long been a subject of fascination, and few have explored it as thoroughly as award-winning author Jack Olsen. In his national best seller Son: A Psychopath and His Victims, Olsen studied a psychopathic rapist who found the perfect protective coloration in jogging shoes and sweats. In this book, the story of Claude Lafayette Dallas, Jr., Olsen takes on perhaps his most challenging assignment -- explicating the curious relationship between a homicidal young "mountain man" and those who saw in his colorful ways the embodiment of the cowboy mystique of the West. On a snow-blown day, Dallas killed two game wardens who entered his trapping and poaching camp in ldaho's Owyhee Desert. The cold-bloodedness of Dallas's crime shocked the West. Stained with his victim's blood. he confessed to a companion, "This is Murder One for me." Then Claude Dallas vanished into the wild and rugged mountains that had sheltered him for so long. For fifteen long months he was the subject of an international manhunt until the FBI and a drawling country sheriff joined forces to run him to earth in a rain of bullets. Only then did lawmen learn about the network of friends who had helped him elude capture. To some of Dallas's rustic neighbors the deadly progression from cowboy to poacher to killer seemed justifiable, even admirable. Clanking around the bars and barrancas of the high desert country in his hand-filed spurs and well-oiled guns, Claude Dallas had brought a strange new madness to the mythology of the West, a madness that even a jury of his peers found nostalgically seductive in a sensational trial. Claude Dallas came within a whisker of going free. Only Jack Olsen, through painstaking research into Dallas's background and exhaustive on-the-scene interviewing, could unravel such a rat's nest of contradictions and confusions and create so compelling a portrait of the killer whose bloody deeds might have been foreordained from childhood. From Publishers Weekly Claude Dallas Jr. was raised in Upper Michigan and Ohio by a father whose philosophy was "give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man." After high school, the young man went to the rugged border area of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada and worked as a cow-puncher and handyman on several ranches. But his dream was evidently to become a 19th centurystyle mountain man and so he turned to poaching, often killing animals even though he had no need for the meat. In 1981, he killed two game wardens in front of a witness. On the run for 15 months, he was eventually captured in a shootout and found guilty of manslaughter in a singularly bizarre trial. From Library Journal ``Give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man,'' Claude Dallas, Sr., is quoted as saying in this book about his son, Claude Jr., a self-made cowboy, trapper, and ``mountain man'' who was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Idaho game wardens. Claude Jr. was well-liked by many, including a sympathetic jury which rejected possible first or second degree murder verdicts. Was it a case of self-defense or outright murder? Olsen, who last wrote the popular `` Son'': a psychopath and his victims ( LJ 11/15/83), skillfully presents his viewpoint in a readable tale more reminiscent of Old West traditions than of the 1980s. Recommended.

Download or read book Aphrodite Desperate Mission written by Jack Olsen and published by Crime Rant Books. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic! First time in digital format! This is the story of the most incredible mission of World War II, born in desperation and carried out with foolhardy courage and at the cost of brave men's lives: Mission Aphrodite! A real-life, aerial Guns of Navarone scheme that called for volunteers to guide B-17 drone planes packed with explosives into the Nazi V-2 rocket bases. The mission that cost Joe Kennedy, Jr., his life. The award-winning author of thirty-three books, Jack Olsen’s books have published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen's journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild's Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. He was listed in Who's Who in America since 1968 and in Who's Who in the World since 1987. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "an American treasure." Olsen was described as "the dean of true crime authors" by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and "the master of true crime" by the Detroit Free Press and Newsday. Publishers Weekly called him "the best true crime writer around." His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as "a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike." Olsen is a two-time winner in the Best Fact Crime category of the Mystery Writer’s of America, Edgar award.