Family Secrets

Family Secrets
Author :
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Total Pages : 441
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781569765456
ISBN-13 : 1569765456
Rating : 4/5 (56 Downloads)

Synopsis Family Secrets by : Jeff Coen

Painting a vivid picture of the pivotal case that broke apart a Chicago mob family, this narrative relies on court transcripts, police records, interviews, and notes to recreate the story as it unfolded in a 2007 courtroom.

Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob

Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages : 272
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780393245592
ISBN-13 : 0393245594
Rating : 4/5 (92 Downloads)

Synopsis Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob by : Russell Shorto

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America. Best-selling author Russell Shorto, praised for his incisive works of narrative history, never thought to write about his own past. He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence. Then an elderly relative prodded: You’re a writer—what are you gonna do about the story? Smalltime is a mob story straight out of central casting—but with a difference, for the small-town mob, which stretched from Schenectady to Fresno, is a mostly unknown world. The location is the brawny postwar factory town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The setting is City Cigar, a storefront next to City Hall, behind which Russ and his brother-in-law, “Little Joe,” operate a gambling empire and effectively run the town. Smalltime is a riveting American immigrant story that travels back to Risorgimento Sicily, to the ancient, dusty, hill-town home of Antonino Sciotto, the author’s great-grandfather, who leaves his wife and children in grinding poverty for a new life—and wife—in a Pennsylvania mining town. It’s a tale of Italian Americans living in squalor and prejudice, and of the rise of Russ, who, like thousands of other young men, created a copy of the American establishment that excluded him. Smalltime draws an intimate portrait of a mobster and his wife, sudden riches, and the toll a lawless life takes on one family. But Smalltime is something more. The author enlists his ailing father—Tony, the mobster’s son—as his partner in the search for their troubled patriarch. As secrets are revealed and Tony’s health deteriorates, the book become an urgent and intimate exploration of three generations of the American immigrant experience. Moving, wryly funny, and richly detailed, Smalltime is an irresistible memoir by a masterful writer of historical narrative.

Family Affair

Family Affair
Author :
Publisher : Penguin
Total Pages : 207
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781101185575
ISBN-13 : 1101185570
Rating : 4/5 (75 Downloads)

Synopsis Family Affair by : Sam Giancana

The true story of the vicious Chicago underworld from a New York Times bestselling author. With a contract out on his life, Nicholas "Nicky Breeze" Calabrese turned government witness and revealed the truth about the murders of a notorious Mob enforcer and his brother-culminating in a criminal case that would challenge the Mob from the street to the highest seats of power.

Cullotta

Cullotta
Author :
Publisher : Huntington Press Inc
Total Pages : 309
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780929712451
ISBN-13 : 0929712455
Rating : 4/5 (51 Downloads)

Synopsis Cullotta by : Dennis N. Griffin

From burglary to armed robbery and murder, infamous bad guy Frank Cullotta not only did it all, in Cullotta he admits to it -- and in graphic detail. This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro's gang of organised lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta's was a world of high-profile heists, street muscle, and information -- lots of it -- about many of the FBI's most wanted. In the end, that information was his ticket out of crime, as he turned government witness and became one of a handful of mob insiders to enter the Witness Protection Program.

When Corruption Was King

When Corruption Was King
Author :
Publisher : Da Capo Press
Total Pages : 370
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0786715839
ISBN-13 : 9780786715831
Rating : 4/5 (39 Downloads)

Synopsis When Corruption Was King by : Perseus

A Chicago mob attorney describes his double life as an FBI informant; his role in bringing down the Chicago Outfit, perhaps the most powerful family in the history of organized crime; and his new life in the Witness Protection Program. By the author of Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John DeLorean. Reprint.

The Mafia Court

The Mafia Court
Author :
Publisher : Trine Day
Total Pages : 246
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781937584528
ISBN-13 : 1937584526
Rating : 4/5 (28 Downloads)

Synopsis The Mafia Court by : John Hughes

This rigorous examination of the court system is presented from a practical, citizen-based perspective and fueled by the firsthand anecdotes shared with the author by a member of the Mafia in Chicago. Touching upon the history of mob influence, including the dealings of infamous Al Capone, the book asserts both the positives and negatives of organized crime participants who are also functioning members of the Chicago community. It makes claims about the ways in which corruption can develop in a court system, and offers lessons through example on how deep corruption could be in Chicago during various periods and what motivation and opportunity there is for citizens to avoid such court corruption.

Mob Cop

Mob Cop
Author :
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Total Pages : 346
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781613731345
ISBN-13 : 1613731345
Rating : 4/5 (45 Downloads)

Synopsis Mob Cop by : Fred Pascente

Former Chicago police officer and mafia associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, a central character in Nicholas Pileggi's Casino and one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt. While Spilotro became one of the youngest made men in Chicago Outfit history, Pascente was drafted into the army and then joined the police department. Soon taken under Hanhardt's wing, Pascente served as Hanhardt's fixer and bagman on the department for more than a decade. At the same time, Pascente remained close to Spilotro, making frequent trips to Las Vegas to party with his old friend while helping to rob the casinos blind. Mob Cop tells about the decline of traditional organized crime in the United States, and it reveals information about the inner workings of the Outfit that have never been publicly released. Fred Pascente's positions as an insider on both the criminal and law enforcement fronts make this story a matchless tell-all. Fred Pascente was a Chicago police officer for twenty-six years and a professional thief with close ties to the mafia. He died in 2014. Sam Reaves is the author of ten novels and has served as president of the Midwest chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Patient H.M.

Patient H.M.
Author :
Publisher : Random House
Total Pages : 480
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781448104680
ISBN-13 : 1448104688
Rating : 4/5 (80 Downloads)

Synopsis Patient H.M. by : Luke Dittrich

In the summer of 1953, maverick neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville performed a groundbreaking operation on an epileptic patient named Henry Molaison. But it was a catastrophic failure, leaving Henry unable to create long-term memories. Scoville's grandson, Luke Dittrich, takes us on an astonishing journey through the history of neuroscience, from the first brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the New England asylum where his grandfather developed a taste for human experimentation. Dittrich's investigation confronts unsettling family secrets and reveals the dark roots of modern neuroscience, raising troubling questions that echo into the present day.

Uncle Al Capone

Uncle Al Capone
Author :
Publisher : Recaplodge LLC
Total Pages : 215
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780982845103
ISBN-13 : 0982845103
Rating : 4/5 (03 Downloads)

Synopsis Uncle Al Capone by : Deirdre Marie Capone

This is the revised edition, March 2015. The untold story from inside his family. Dramatic, unyielding, and provocative, Uncle Al Capone by Deirdre Marie Capone, Al Capone's grandniece, is a fascinating memoir and engaging biography. This moving, highly readable portrait of the Capone family and its mob trade examines what it has meant to survive the storied legacy of the family's forbearers. As Capone traces the arc of regret and what fuels the Capone myth, she finds redemption and a way to coexist with her legacy. In seventeen chapters with titles like "The Making of the Mafioso," "Trading the Chicago Outfit for the Chicago Cubs," and "The Saint Valentine's Day Truth," Capone outlines organized crime in Chicago and offers vignettes of American history during the early and mid-twentieth century. Using years of research and exhaustive interviews with her aunts, uncles, and cousins, she weaves an engaging anecdotal narrative of what it meant to be a Capone, what it meant to lose her father to suicide, and what it meant to have a mother who lived in constant fear. She offers compelling evidence that Al Capone was specifically targeted for prosecution by law enforcement agencies assisted by the media, which made gross exaggerations of her uncle's exploits and fueled a phenomenon of half-truths and utter falsehoods. From the family's roots in Angri, Italy to the author's ongoing investigations today, this debut offers a comprehensive and moving portrait of an iconic American family and one woman's efforts to make peace with the past.

Chaos

Chaos
Author :
Publisher : Little, Brown
Total Pages : 500
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780316477574
ISBN-13 : 0316477575
Rating : 4/5 (74 Downloads)

Synopsis Chaos by : Tom O'Neill

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history. Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order -- their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia -- or dystopia -- was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi -- prosecutor of the Manson Family and author of Helter Skelter -- turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions: Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him? And how did Manson -- an illiterate ex-con -- turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, Chaos mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.