Powerful...Poignant...Inspiring As a child growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Gregory Marshall was enamored with the fast life. Money, women and cars were the things to have and Greg was determined to get them-by any means necessary. It wasn't long before the innocent youngster had turned into a cold-hearted gangster known around town simply as G Man. His ruthless life of crime made him a legend in South Central LA-and the go-to man for everyone from Tupac Shakur to the notorious Monster Kody. But a drug deal gone bad eventually left him shot and near death...forcing him into the ultimate struggle for survival. Faced with intense rehabilitation and paralyssis that had crippled the entire right side of his body, Greg had two choices, give up or get up. He chose the latter. And with the use of only one finger, he wrote his story through gritty, breathtaking, and sometimes brutal details...including his anger at injustices, the pain of abandonment and one unlikely act of kindness that started him on the path of healing and forgiveness.

“When Mom got out of jail, it was great having her home.” Mondo the Dwarf. Frankie Shots. Jospeh “Little Lolly Pop” Carna. Larry “Big Lolly Pop” Carna. Salvatore “Sally Boy” Marinelli. Johnny Tarzan. Louie Pizza. Sally D, Bobby B, Roy Roy, and Punchy. They were THE PRESIDENT STREET BOYS of Brooklyn, New York. Frank Dimatteo was born into a family of mob hitmen. His father and godfather were shooters and bodyguards for infamous Mafia legends, the Gallo brothers. His uncle was a capo in the Genovese crime family and bodyguard to Frank Costello. Needless to say, DiMatteo saw and heard things that a boy shouldn’t see or hear. He knew everybody in the neighborhood. And they knew him. . .and his family. And does he have some wild stories to tell. . . From the old-school Mafia dons and infamous “five families” who called all the shots, to the new-breed “independents” of the ballsy Gallo gang who didn’t answer to nobody, Dimatteo pulls no punches in describing what it’s really like growing up in the mob. Getting his cheeks pinched by Crazy Joe Gallo until tears came down his face. Dropping out of school and hanging gangster-style with the boys on President Street. Watching the Gallos wage an all-out war against wiseguys with more power, more money, more guns. And finally, revealing the shocking deathbed confessions that will blow the lid off the sordid deeds, stunning betrayals, and all-too-secret history of the American Mafia. Originally self-published as Lion in the Basement Raves For THE PRESIDENT STREET BOYS: Growing Up Mafia “Frankie D was born and raised in this life—and he’s still alive and still free. They don’t come any sharper then Frankie D. A real gangster story. Read this book!” —Nicky “Slick” DiPietro, New York City “I know Frankie D from when i was a kid living in South Brooklyn. It was hard reading about my father, Gennaro “Chitoz” Basciano, but I knew it was the truth. Frankie’s book is dead on the money—I couldn’t put it down.” —Eddie Basciano, somewhere in Florida “It’s been forty years since I’ve been with Frankie D doing our thing on President Street. This book was like a flashback, Frankie D nails it from beginning to the end. Bravo, from one of the President Street Boys.” —Anthony “Goombadiel” DeLuca, Brooklyn, New York “As a neighborhood kid I grew up around President Street and know firsthand the lure of ‘the life’ as a police officer and as a kid that escaped the lure. I can tell you the blind loyalty that the crews had for their bosses—unbounded, limitless, and dangerous. As the Prince of President Street, Frank Dimatteo, is representative of a lost generation of Italian Americans. If any of this crew had been given a fair shot at the beginning they would have been geniuses in their chosen field.” —Joseph "Giggy" Gagliardo, Retired DEA Agent, New York City “The President Street Boys takes me back as if it was a time machine. Its authenticity is compelling reading for those interested in what things were really like in those mob heydays; not some author’s formulation without an inkling of what was going on behind the scenes. I loved the book because I was there, and know for sure readers will love it too.” —Sonny Girard, author of Blood of Our Fathers and Sins of Our Sons

In the early 1960s, a bloody civil war broke out between the two powerful Irish Mob families in the Somerville Massachusetts neighborhood known as Winter Hill. More than 60 men were murdered. The events offer a true picture of an era in Boston's pre-Whitey Bulger history when the streets were protected by a close-knit group of Irish-Italian "businessmen."

A classic in contemporary Oklahoma literature, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Red Dirt unearths the joys and ordeals of growing up poor during the 1940s and 1950s. In this exquisite rendering of her childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era, the author bears witness to a family and community that still cling to the dream of America as a republic of landowners.

The children of notorious Mafia wiseguy and informant Henry Hill-the real-life subject of Goodfellas-tell their own story of danger, hurt, and family in this extraordinary account of growing up with an out-of-control father in the federal witness protection program. Henry Hill's business partner, Jimmy Burke, has whacked every person who could possibly implicate him in the infamous Lufthansa robbery at JFK airport. On his way to prison, lifelong gangster Henry is given two options: sleep with the fishes, or enter the FBI's Witness Protection Program. Unfortunately for his children Gregg and Gina, they're dragged along for the ride. Like nomads, they're forced to wander from state to state, constantly inventing new names and finding new friends, only to abandon them at a moment's notice. They live under constant fear of being found and killed. But Henry, the rock Gregg and Gina so desperately need, is a heavy cocaine user and knows only the criminal life. He is soon up to his old tricks and consistently putting their identities in jeopardy. And so it continues until the kids, now almost grown, can no longer ignore that the Mob might be less of a threat to them than remaining under the roof of their increasingly unbalanced father.

Photographer Lauren Greenfield capures often shocking, always startling images of children at school, at play, or at home in the precocious city of Los Angeles. The stunning color photographs range from the children of the gang culture of South Central and East L.A. to the affluent, often show-business world of the Westside. Underlying is the overwhelming importance of image and celebrity, with its materialistic trappings of fast cars and expensive clothes. 80 full-color photos.

The highly acclaimed novel that reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country. “A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.” —The New York Times Book Review In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.

It is 1952, and in the opening pages of Little Gangster, Joey DAngelo, our young Sicilian protagonist, and his friend, Johnny Marino, are called late at night to First Street park where their gangster employer, Pepi Savino, is in the middle of an argument with another gangster, Nick Bonanti. Immediately after the two twelve year old boys arrive in the park, the confrontation becomes violent and Joey is told by Pepi to carry out a task which risks arrest for Joey and becomes one of the great challenges facing him in the novel. The boys have been running errands for Pepi and earning money for bets on stickball games. Joey has no moral concern about this work until he is called into the office of Peter Capra, Director of The Boys Club of New York, and is offered an opportunity for a scholarship to a New England prep school; but there is a catch: Joey must break all ties with Pepi Savino. Joey finally decides what to do, and in an exciting climax, he confronts Pepi with his decision. In this dramatic coming-of-age tale, Joey takes the first steps toward realizing the American dream, its pursuits, its challenges and sacrifices. For 140 years, The Boys Club of New York, (BCNY), has combined a single-minded focus on boys and young men with a unique multi-disciplinary approach which prepares them for a fulfilling and meaningful adulthood. The Boys Club accomplishes this through an approach which includes music and arts programs, social activities, academic support and athletics. By introducing them to new ideas in a nurturing environment, BCNY helps shape them into the best adults they can be. The Boys Club of New York has sent over 2,000 boys to prep schools and colleges throughout the country since 1952. A percentage of all book sales will go to support programming at the Boys Club of New York. To learn more about The Boys Club of New York, visit www.bcny.org.

What really goes on behind the veil of celebrity? Rocky Lang, who grew up in the 90210 as the son of mega-producer and screen disaster master Jennings Lang (Earthquake, the Airport movies and 35 other features), dishes all in his new book, Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul. Raised around the likes of Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Walter Matthau and Billy Wilder, Lang serves up-in self-deprecating style-a genuine insider's collection of bizarre, sometimes ribald, often hilarious and always surprising true tales from the rarefied world of Hollywood, such as: * Finding himself a pawn in the brutal creative war between Dustin Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack during the making of the classic comedy Tootsie. ! * Spying on Olivia Newton-John being photographed nude in his family's backyard pool, and the "breast-beating" he endured after getting caught in the act. ! * Discovering the scandal-sheet affair between his dad and screen siren Joan Bennett- along with the truth behind his father getting shot in the crotch by Bennett's husband. ! * Having Steven Spielberg as an "older brother" before and after the famous filmmaker's meteoric rise. ! *Being told by his dad that writer Gore Vidal offered to buy young Rocky for $1 million. ! * Learning his mother had slept with Ronald Reagan, plus the outrageous nickname the future U.S. president had given his own sexual prowess.

Memories of Growing Up in Little Italy, NYThis is a memoir of childhood friends growing up together in the 40's and 50'sin Little Italy NY. It tells the story of the culture of living in a poor neighborhoodwith Italian Immigrants.The old neighborhood, as it is still referred to by its past residents, was full oflife with Italians that immigrated from different areas of Italy bringing withthem all their different foods, cultures, superstitions and most of all theirdreams to raise their children to become good, honest and successful AmericanCitizens. Growing up in Little Italy was difficult, yet rewarding. We wereconsidered poor in terms of material wealth, but many of us grew up richer inmind, body and soul.Most of all we had our imaginations to dream up games that gave us somethingto do all day long. In our own way we were entrepreneurs, as we did anythingto make money like selling newspapers, shining shoes, running errands andmore. Looking back, the Good Times Were Rolling Along.