Drummer for the Mob

Drummer for the Mob, a novel by by Frank Catanzano (AuthorHouse), is an irreverent and often funny look at life working with members of organized crime who ran many of the clubs in Pittsburgh. Based on true events, Frank has taken great pains to disguise the people, places and things in this tell-all story of how the wise guys ruled through intimidation and threats.

"Frankie, give this envelope to Mr. Passano when you see him tomorrow," club manager and ever-vigilant doorman Jerry D'iorfio said. The envelope was sealed but I could tell there was a great deal of cash in it. I'm just the drummer with the band, and now suddenly I am making some sort of delivery to the syndicate. My mother would have been proud.

"Don't worry," Jerry laughed. "We trust you. After all, you're a paesano, am I right?" He suddenly grew serious. "Plus, you pull any fast one and, bing bada bing, you're history." Then Jerry laughed again. Frankie Severino wasn't laughing. When the FBI and IRS investigated him four years later, they weren't laughing either.

In Frank Catanzano's novel, Drummer for the Mob, main character Frankie Severino launched his musical career at the tender age of 14 in bars and clubs in the city, where men pushed their inebriated wives on him and girls would make offers he couldn't refuse. He quickly learned the charisma and power a musician held for some, and grew into a young man who would crack wise to anyone, from the wise guys themselves to the FBI and IRS, which tried to coerce him into identifying the men he worked for. In his own inimitable fashion Frankie said, "I had the FBI so far up my ass I could taste Brylcream…but I gave them bupkus." This investigation ultimately cost him his day job at an advertising agency. It wasn't until he met the 17-year-old Toni that his life began to change and with her support, would break the hold the syndicate had on him.

Frankie's narrative is a personal account of the sometimes hilarious and often dangerous years he and his fellow musicians in The Nite Lites toiled in these clubs. Drummer for the Mob is a no holds barred, behind the scenes look at the sex, drugs and rock and roll during these pre-AIDS years, told through the lens of social values and the music genres of the period. Drummer, a work of fiction, is based on actual events. The names of the crime families, bosses, clubs and band members have been changed to protect Frankie "because he can't swim."

The reader can almost smell the beer and cigarette smoke settling like a shroud over the infamous after hours club, the Horizon Club, as Frankie Severino has to deal with owner Big Julie Passano, who intimidates with a heavy hand and a deadly stare. When Frankie and his band tried to leave the Horizon, Big Julie called him:

"You ain't going nowhere. My customers like you guys. I like you guys." I could feel his love through the phone."

"Mr. Passano, we've played at the Horizon for a little over three years, and we're tired. I believe it's a good time to bring in new blood, and another band that will re-energize the club." There was a deafening silence on the other line. Then Julie Passano calmly said in a frosty voice, "Frankie, can you swim?"

Drummer for the Mob will appeal to a wide range of readers, including those fascinated with the Mafia and organized crime, the millions of musicians who ply their trade in cover bands around the country and the Baby Boomers who boogied their way through the 70s in the clubs, while dancing to live music. They will find Drummer to be a compelling look at the way the wise guys ran their operations and controlled their customers. The millions who watched The Sopranos and The Godfather will love the way this book uniquely combines the color and sounds of Saturday Night Fever with the violence and dark humor of Good Fellas.

Frank Catanzano is a respected journalist and public relations consultant who has worked for corporations and organizations around the world. He has written speeches for top executives and hundreds of articles on subjects ranging from stainless alloys for aerospace to life aboard an oil super tanker. Frank has won more than 16 national and local writing and publicity awards and today owns Emerald City Communications, one of Pittsburgh's leading marketing firms. An accomplished musician, he also plays drums with local bands, primarily for fund-raising events.

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The King of Sting: The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw

The King of Sting: The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw, is an amazing true story of an modern American Outlaw. While not a typical mob book, it is a stunning tale that crosses over several times into organized crime themes.

No one could have predicted that a petty crime against Craig Glazer would be the catalyst for a life on the edge. But then again, nothing about Craig Glazer was predictable.

In 1971, as a skinny Jewish kid from Kansas City, Glazer was attending Arizona State University when he was robbed while buying marijuana for his fraternity brothers. His head filled with lessons in crime and criminals learned from movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which the hero was just on the edge of the law, Craig decided to get even with the dealers who robbed him. He set up his first fake "sting," pretending to be law enforcement. Unbelievably, his plan worked with him walking away with $50,000, and it set him on a path that was as unlikely as it was dangerous.

He masterminded a two-year spree of stings that stretched from Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland to Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Posing as everything from local police to IRS agents to hotel managers, he and his crew set up cons and raked in a fortune.

Craig and his partner, the streetwise Viet Nam veteran Donald Woodbeck, had such success that the Attorney General's office asked them for help ferreting out some of the most sought-after drug lords in the country. It was a dangerous double life. Like many other rags to riches stories, Craig's does not lead to a Hollywood happy ending. There was payback. Woodbeck was murdered which led to Craig posing as the Mafia to extract revenge, but eventually, he landed in prison. The King of Sting is a story of wanting to be famous, even if it meant becoming infamous.

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The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosimo and the Ladies of the Levee

While some people are fascinated or repulsed by the evil crimes committed by Chicago mobsters, others have studied it. And one who has is studied the mob is Wauconda author Arthur J. Bilek, whose book is "The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosemo and the Ladies of the Levee."

"The First Vice Lord" covers the early years of the Chicago outfit through 1920. Bilek found that it began with Big Jim Colosimo, who came to the United States from Italy, worked as a Chicago street cleaner and rose in Chicago's political ranks.

The book details Colosimo's career through the time period. Bilek has also co-authored a book with William Helmer, entitled "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre."

Bilek's life of battling crime began after graduating in 1953 from Loyola University with a masters degree in criminology. He spent the rest of his life in law enforcement and education, climbing the ranks of the Chicago Police Department and was appointed Chief of Cook County Sheriff's Office in 1962.

He said he started the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Criminal Justice bachelor's of science program in 1966, was the associate director of Northwestern's Traffic Institute in 1989, He also worked on Cook County's Cold Case Task Force.

Most recently he was a board member of the Chicago Crime Commission and followed the Family Secrets trials. He believes the outfit still operates but its political prowess has dwindled since Colosimo's day.

Thanks to Ilene Haluska

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The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosemo and the Ladies of the Levee

My tendency to either skim books or proofread them (from early magazine days) has encountered a new one from former Cook County police chief Art Bilek that I can’t put down: The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosemo and the Ladies of the Levee.

This is a masterpiece of writing and excruciatingly accurate research that describes how Big Jim Colosimo rose from a lowly street-sweeper to the most prominent operator of whorehouses, gambling joints, and low-life restaurants in the days leading up to Prohibition, with the collusion of the police and politicians and the managerial skills of John Torrio and Al Capone. When his increasingly notorious Colosimo’s Café combined with his growing desire for respectability, love for a young songbird, and failure to exploit the opportunities afforded by Prohibition, Torrio (we must presume) had him murdered in the vestibule of his elegant restaurant in 1920—and the band marched on.

Nowhere has Chicago’s graft and corruption been so carefully and entertainingly documented, with special attention to the backgrounds of Torrio and Capone, who worked hard to weld the new and competing bootlegging gangs into the greatest illicit booze empire the country has ever known--one that did not factionalize into Chicago’s bloody Beer Wars that began with the killing of North Side mob-leader Dean O’Banion four years later. My own work has concentrated on the years following Prohibition, so I’m especially happy to report that Bilek’s book explains what made the Roaring Twenties possible.

Reviewed by William J. Helmer, courtesy of On the Spot Journal.

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El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

The world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico. Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it part of a worldwide shadow economy that threatens Mexico's democracy? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters, DEA assistance, and lots of money at the problem. But in secret, Washington is at a loss. Who are these mysterious figures who threaten Mexico's democracy? What is El Narco?

El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands, from bullet-riddled barrios to marijuana-covered mountains. The conflict spawned by El Narco has given rise to paramilitary death squads battling from Guatemala to the Texas border (and sometimes beyond). In this "propulsive ... high-octane" book (Publishers Weekly), Ioan Grillo draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's cartels and how they have radically transformed in the past decade.

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency.

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Umbrella Mike: The True Story of the Chicago Gangster Behind the #Indy500 @IMS

Editor's note: Much of the information that follows is from the book "Umbrella Mike: The True Story of the Chicago Gangster Behind the Indy 500" by Brock Yates, which was published in 2006 by A Thunder's Mouth Press

As the son of a Chicago South Sider, I learned long ago that if you want to get something done, "It takes a guy who knows a guy."

Michael J. "Umbrella Mike" Boyle was just such a guy.

One of most colorful and controversial labor leaders in the history of this country, Boyle ruled the Windy City's most-powerful electricians' union for more than a half century.

In a time when corruption and lawlessness gripped the city, Mike Boyle walked the fine line between crooked politicians and the Chicago Mob. He did it all the way to the pinnacle of the American labor movement, constantly doing it in a shroud of mystery.

When he wasn't in Chicago dominating union politics, he was racing at Indianapolis with his Boyle Racing Team, winning the Indianapolis 500 three times.

The early years

Born in rural Minnesota in June of 1879, Michael J. Boyle was one of 11 children raised on a potato farm. His early years were spent in parochial schools until he joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) at the age of 16.

By 1905 he became certified as a full-time electrician for the Chicago Tunnel Company, the firm responsible for the construction and management of some 60 miles of underground tunnels that linked Loop businesses -- 40 feet below the streets of downtown Chicago.

Boyle joined the IBEW in Chicago 1906, and by 1909 was a business manager for Local 134. By the 1920s he rose to the position of vice president within the local and ruled IBEW Local 134 with an iron fist, eventually amassing a union membership of 10,000 steadfastly loyal electricians.

Early in his career, "Umbrella Mike" Boyle reportedly earned his nickname for his ability to gather "tributes" or "donations," if you will, from contractors and other citizens who sought his much-needed support for various business projects.

Boyle would simply hang his umbrella on the edge of the bar at Johnson's Saloon, his unofficial headquarters on West Madison Street, when he entered early in the evening. Those requesting his favors or guidance would then drop cash in the unattended umbrella. At the end of the evening Boyle would then retrieve the cash-laden umbrella on his way out.

When once confronted on how he was able to amass a grand total of $350,000 on a weekly paycheck of $35, Boyle replied, "It was with great thrift."

Rising to the top in labor

The early 1900s was a period of great unrest between the corporate owners of American industry and the American worker. Long hours and low pay, coupled with abuse of the worker's rights, gave rise for the need of unions to protect the rights of working men and women.

As the country's industrial base prospered, workers across American united under the guidance of men who showed no fear in the face of overwhelming odds. Mike Boyle was such a man.

In one of the clearest examples of Boyle's power, in January of 1937 he yanked 450 of the 800 city-employed electrical workers off the job at 8 p.m., shutting off 94,558 municipal street lights, all the traffic lights in Chicago's Loop and put 38 of the 55 drawbridges that cross the Chicago River, in the up position.

Automobiles, streetcars and pedestrians were trapped, with the city's police force helpless as the power to their telephones was shut off, too. Two hours and 40 minutes later, Boyle acquiesced and turned the city back on, all with a simple phone call.

Racing at Indianapolis

Mike Boyle was a sportsman at heart who loved competition. That was what drew him to Indy-car racing. Once Boyle made up his mind that he wanted to go racing, he pursued his quest with abandon. Starting in 1926, Boyle first got his feet wet with a single-car entry in the 13th running of Indianapolis 500. In his first showing at Indianapolis, the No. 36 Boyle Valve Miller driven by Cliff Woodbury overcame a flat tire to capture third place, earning a purse of $5,000.

Over the next seven years Boyle entered a total of 15 cars in Indianapolis 500 competition with the best finish being a seventh place. He always entered top-notch equipment and hired the best drivers, such as Woodbury, Ralph Hepburn, Billy Arnold, Peter DePaolo and Lou Moore.

In 1934, all of Boyle's efforts came to fruition when "Wild Bill" Cummings in the No. 7 Boyle Products Special/Miller took the checkered flag in record time, earning a record purse of $29,725.

Having won the Indianapolis 500 only made "Umbrella Mike" thirst for more.

The next four years saw him enter 13 cars in the Memorial Day Classic, garnering three top-five finishes.

In 1939, having tired of trying to wring out more speed from the oversized Millers and Stevens-Offy he owned, Boyle reached across the Atlantic Ocean to a tiny Italian automobile company and without fanfare quietly purchased a Maserati 8CTF. The car was shipped to Boyle Racing headquarters in Indianapolis.

There Boyle turned the car over to his crew-chief, Harry "Cotton" Henning, a former riding mechanic. Henning was greatly respected by his peers and along with Boyle's money was able to outfit a pristinely kept racing operation that was second to none.

Then Boyle hired arguably the best "shoe" in the business, Indiana native Wilbur Shaw.

The marriage between Shaw and the Boyle Special Maserati was magic, dominating both the 1939 and 1940 Indianapolis 500s. Boyle's combined winnings for the two successive victories was $58,100. In addition, Boyle's other driver, the legendary Ted Horn, copped successive fourth place finishes to add another $9,325.

Following his two-year domination of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Mike Boyle raced again in 1941 and 1946, with the best results being a sixth and third-place finishes, respectively. But the war years took their toll on Boyle and he left Indy-car racing for good after 1946, while in his mid-60s.

During the course of his racing career, it was never clear where the money was coming from that funded one of the most well-equipped racing operations in the business. "Umbrella Mike's" livery on the cars was seemingly changing from season to season. Boyle Products, Boyle Valve, Boyle Racing Headquarters, the IBEW -- all these names were seen on the side of Mike Boyle's cars.

After retiring from Indy-car racing, "Umbrella Mike" still dominated union politics in Chicago through his role as a vice president of Local 134 of the IBEW. He died from heart failure in 1958 while in Miami Beach, Fla.

The Chicago Daily Tribune reported on the filing of Boyle's estate in probate court. It was revealed that his entire estate -- which included a 40-acre ranch in Texas -- was valued at only $19,000.

It would appear that "Umbrella Mike" left us with one more mystery.

Thanks to William LaDow

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Richard Nixon: The Life

From a prize-winning biographer comes, Richard Nixon: The Life, the defining portrait of a man who led America in a time of turmoil and left us a darker age. We live today, John A. Farrell shows, in a world Richard Nixon made.

At the end of WWII, navy lieutenant “Nick” Nixon returned from the Pacific and set his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon’s finer attributes gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. The story of that transformation is the stunning overture to John A. Farrell’s magisterial biography of the president who came to embody postwar American resentment and division.

Within four years of his first victory, Nixon was a U.S. senator; in six, the vice president of the United States of America. “Few came so far, so fast, and so alone,” Farrell writes. Nixon’s sins as a candidate were legion; and in one unlawful secret plot, as Farrell reveals here, Nixon acted to prolong the Vietnam War for his own political purposes. Finally elected president in 1969, Nixon packed his staff with bright young men who devised forward-thinking reforms addressing health care, welfare, civil rights, and protection of the environment. It was a fine legacy, but Nixon cared little for it. He aspired to make his mark on the world stage instead, and his 1972 opening to China was the first great crack in the Cold War.
   
Nixon had another legacy, too: an America divided and polarized. He was elected to end the war in Vietnam, but his bombing of Cambodia and Laos enraged the antiwar movement. It was Nixon who launched the McCarthy era, who played white against black with a “southern strategy,” and spurred the Silent Majority to despise and distrust the country’s elites. Ever insecure and increasingly paranoid, he persuaded Americans to gnaw, as he did, on grievances—and to look at one another as enemies. Finally, in August 1974, after two years of the mesmerizing intrigue and scandal of Watergate, Nixon became the only president to resign in disgrace.

Richard Nixon is a gripping and unsparing portrayal of our darkest president. Meticulously researched, brilliantly crafted, and offering fresh revelations, it will be hailed as a master work.

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Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America

In a ranch south of Texas, the man known as The Executioner dumps five hundred body parts in metal barrels. In Brazil's biggest city, a mysterious prisoner orders hit-men to gun down forty-one police officers and prison guards in two days. In southern Mexico, a crystal meth maker is venerated as a saint while imposing Old Testament justice on his enemies. A new kind of criminal kingpin has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star, unleashing guerrilla attacks, strong-arming governments and taking over much of the world's trade in narcotics, guns and humans. Who are these new masters of death? What personal qualities and life experiences have made them into such bloodthirsty leaders of men? What do they represent and stand for? What has happened in the Americas to allow them to grow and flourish? Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001, and gained access to every level of the cartel chain-of-command in what he calls the new battlefields of the Americas. Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policy-makers, Grillo provides a new and disturbing understanding of a war that has spiraled out of control - one that people across the political spectrum need to confront now. Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America, is the first definitive account of the crime wars now wracking Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America.

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Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History

A gay man who created New York’s most notorious den of heterosexuality . . . an anxious, anything-but, hard-boiled lawyer who became one of the most successful undercover mob informants in history.

In this hilarious and fascinating account, Michael Blutrich takes you inside star-studded 1990s New York, mafia sit-downs, and the witness protection program.

Meet Michael D. Blutrich, founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York history. A resourceful lawyer at one of the city’s most respected firms, Blutrich fell into the skin trade almost by accident, but it was his legal savvy that made Scores the first club in Manhattan to feature lap dances and enabled him to neatly sidestep a law requiring dancers to wear pasties by instead covering their nipples with latex paint. Soon Scores, the club Howard Stern called “like being in a candy shop,” was a home away from home for everyone from sports superstars and Oscar-winning actors to pop singers and political notables alike.

The catch? The club was smack dab in John Gotti’s territory, and the mafia wanted a piece of the action. The Gambino family doesn’t take no for an answer . . . and neither, as it turns out, does the FBI. In his memoir, Blutrich recounts in detail how his beloved club became a hub for the mafia, and how he found himself caught up in an FBI investigation, sorely struggling to juggle roles of business owner and undercover spy.

As his life spiraled out of control, Blutrich would face the loss of almost everything dear to him. But whether marching a line of topless strippers as human exhibits into a trial to save the club’s liquor license or wearing wires to meetings with armed gangsters, he never lost his sense of humor or his nerve. In Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History, Blutrich finally tells all—from triumph to betrayal—in his own funny, self-deprecating voice.

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All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops

This book tells the remarkable true stories of America’s most infamous Public-Enemy-Number-1 gangsters. Based on exhaustive documented research, Bill Friedman chronicles the true history of illegal gambling, rum-running, organized crime, and the politics of law enforcement during the Prohibition era.

Based on crime-scene eyewitness accounts, state’s witnesses harborers’ accounts, and historical records, Friedman paints exciting portraits of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and other luminaries of the underworld—and documents how surprisingly different that world was from the way Hollywood portrays it. Like great literary characters, history’s gangsters and bank robbers were complex and fraught with contradiction.

Captivating tales of criminal daring are balanced with shocking political exposés revealing how complicity and incompetence hindered the effectiveness of law enforcement. Written in fast-moving prose that’s sure to entertain, All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops, is a must-read for anyone who loves classic American ‘cops and robbers’ stories. Friedman’s historical accounts are as exciting and dramatic as any genre fiction, while ringing with the power of truth and authenticity.

“All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops” covers U.S. major crime in the Great Depression era. It is the incredible stories of daring prison escapes and breathtaking police pursuits by the Great Depression’s four successive Public Enemies Number One - John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Alvin Karpis with the Barker brothers. These were the most aggressive and dangerous killers ever. When fleeing from pursuing lawmen, every one of these bank robbers either whirled their cars around and floored their accelerator towards their pursuers, or they ran in the open, charging pursuers while relentlessly blasting away with machineguns. All these ferocious counterattacks made them dreadfully successful at killing the most policemen and FBI agents of any American outlaws. This is the first complete history because the newspaper accounts and trial testimonies by both their criminal cohorts and the harborers during their long fugitive manhunts are included.

Against these fierce killers, Congress assigned a fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an accounting agency of government money made up of politically-appointed accountants and attorneys with no police experience. Headed by J. Edgar Hoover, a librarian, he failed to teach his agents any of the fundamentals of police and detective work or instruct them to respect individual liberties and rights. Thus, his courageous but ill-prepared early agents conducted one amateurish and failed raid after another that occasionally caused disastrous results for both his agents and innocent civilian bystanders caught up in the lines of fire.

Hoover’s leadership and management of the FBI has been thoroughly discredited by contemporary exposé articles and scholarly historical biographies. This book penetrates the veil much further in presenting how politically-conservative Hoover failed to prosecute serious criminals, used underhanded illegal tactics against critics; occasionally fought to survive his malfeasance in office; and blackmailed errant Congressmen to further his own political agenda. All this made him an unaccountable malevolent fourth branch of the federal government totally outside the brilliantly-conceived Constitutional checks-and-balances system.

To disprove that the FBI’s chief suspect, Pretty Boy Floyd, was involved in the Kansas City Massacre that slaughtered four lawmen, and to finally reveal the actual perpetrators and their motives, the forty-year reign of that town’s unique political-power structure is laid bare. The town’s political kingmaker Jim Pendergast chose as his lieutenant the city’s Mafia leader, and this Mafioso selected the chief of police and his detectives. The state legislature tried to stop this affront to justice by having the governor appoint a Police Commission to control the city’s departmental hirings. This action just led Kansas City’s Mafia chieftain to expand his political sphere of influence across the state to elect puppet governors who appointed Commissioners of his choosing.

These Kansas City political leaders stuffed ballot boxes in every election of politically-progressive Harry Truman, who later became the only president to sell out to organized crime because of his long political ties to the Kansas City Mafia. The entire last chapter strictly covers the many interactions Truman had from the White House with this Mafioso. Their mutual political hijinks, conflicts, and intrigue are astonishing. As tensions mounted this Mafioso was murdered, and Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress directly accused the President of ordering his political henchmen to kill him. This whole period in the White House is beyond mind-boggling.

A number of the gangsters in this book had ties to the early Nevada gambling industry, where the author spent his whole career. The action opens in that state, when Reno was its largest city, and Bill Graham and Jim McKay were the biggest casino operators both before and after gambling was legalized in 1931. Prior to Baby Face Nelson going into bank robbing, he was their doorman/bouncer. Graham and McKay operated the most popular casino in the state’s largest hotel, the Golden, and they developed an effective but very illegal tourist-marketing program to bring in high-rollers during the Great Depression. They offered an emporium of services for criminals who stole money through armed robbery, kidnapping, or by con. This drew financial criminals in large numbers from across the country. One service was to hide fugitives on the run in this isolated town and protect them from police interference. In the weeks to months before the FBI took down Dillinger, Nelson, Floyd, Karpis, and Fred Barker, all enjoyed the safe haven provided by Reno’s casino operators.

Before Ben Siegel began construction of his Fabulous Flamingo gambling resort, Kansas City Mafioso Charles Binaggio, who was shot to death under President Truman’s portrait, had planned to become a major investor in the Thunderbird Hotel & Casino on the Strip. A number of other links between the Kansas City Mafia and the Nevada casino industry during this era are presented. This book closes with the career of Kansas City’s fifth Mafia leader, Nick Civella. As the original pioneer gangsters, who had built the Las Vegas Strip from their Prohibition fortunes, retired and sold out, Civella financed a new wave of hidden underworld casino owners through the Teamsters Union Pension Fund, as was fictionally presented in the 1995 movie Casino.

This book is based on 47 years of research, and it has an enormous amount of new information. It details the major crimes of that era, and it exposes major corruption by politicians, police detectives, prosecutors, and judges. Justice eventually prevailed as the vast majority were imprisoned.

Every word comes from the victims, eyewitnesses, local police officials, or the pursuing FBI agents' official internal reports, as documented in 34 pages of 326 endnotes. the subject Index is 14-pages of double-columns.

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30 Illegal Years to the Strip: The Untold Stories Of The Gangsters Who Built The Early Las Vegas Strip

30 Illegal Years To The Strip: The Untold Stories Of The Gangsters Who Built The Early Las Vegas Strip.

These are the untold inside stories of Prohibition’s most powerful leaders, and how they later ran elegant, illegal casinos across America, before moving on to build the glamorous Las Vegas Strip gambling resorts.

The seven leaders of the three dominating Prohibition gangs imported the world’s finest liquors on a massive scale. Although they conducted their business in an illegal and dangerous world, these seven espoused traditional business values and rejected the key tools of organized crime - monopoly, violence, and vendetta. This made them the most unlikely gangsters to rise to underworld leadership. But they earned every criminal’s respect, and fate made them the most powerful gangland leaders in American history.

Unbelievably, the most murderous and most psychopathic gang leaders not only admired them but supported them in gangland conflicts. In the mid 1900s, these seven leaders stood up to, and restrained, America’s worst villains. The seven prevented many gangland wars and killings.

The three dominating liquor-importers were the first gangs to work closely together in mutual interest. Joining them was the violent Chicago Capone gang, as they partnered in both illegal and legal businesses during and after Prohibition. They were also close allies in the complexities, treachery, and violence of underworld politics.

Some of these seven leaders became powerful overworld political kingmakers. Allied with them in New York City politics was Arnold Rothstein, the ultimate gambler. His murder is one of several major gangland killings finally solved here.

Great entertainment was a key part of these seven gang leaders’ illegal-casino and Strip-resort showrooms. Their biggest-drawing star was comedian Joe E. Lewis. He set the standards for excellence during the half-century popularity of nightclub and casino showroom entertainment.

The action-packed careers and relationships of the gang leaders, who together would go on to build the Las Vegas Strip, are presented for the first time in this thoroughly documented, in-depth, authentic history of how organized crime developed. It contains 546 source notes, and many addendums that expose the serious fallacies and outright fictions of previous books about early organized crime.

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Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America

Heralded by the New York Times as “a shrewd, concise, wonderfully written account of America in the ’30s . . . a reminder of why history matters,” the bestselling sequel to Only Yesterday illuminates the events that brought America back from the brink

Published in 1940, Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America, September 3, 1929 to September 3, 1939, takes up where Lewis’s classic leaves off. Opening on September 3, 1929, in the days before the stock market crash, this information-packed volume takes us through one of America’s darkest times all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Following Black Tuesday, America plunged into the Great Depression. Panic and fear gripped the nation. Banks were closing everywhere. In some cities, 84 percent of the population was unemployed and starving. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, public confidence in the nation slowly began to grow, and by 1936, the industrial average, which had plummeted in 1929 from 125 to fifty-eight, had risen again to almost one hundred. But America still had a long road ahead. Popular historian Frederick Lewis Allen brings to life these ten critical years. With wit and empathy, he draws a devastating economic picture of small businesses swallowed up by large corporations--a ruthless bottom line not so different from what we see today. Allen also chronicles the decade’s lighter side: the fashions, morals, sports, and candid cameras that were revolutionizing Americans’ lives.

From the Lindbergh kidnapping to the New Deal, from the devastating dust storms that raged through our farmlands to the rise of Benny Goodman, the public adoration of Shirley Temple, and our mass escape to the movies, this book is a hopeful and powerful reminder of why history matters.

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Your Witness: Lessons on Cross-Examination and Life from Great Chicago Trial Lawyers

In Your Witness: Lessons on Cross-Examination, fifty of the nation’s top trial lawyers share the secrets of the most engaging, difficult, and dramatic aspect of their work – cross-examination.

These secrets are revealed through richly told courtroom “war stories” with a point. While the stories contain some interesting bits of Chicago “color” – mobsters, corrupt politicians and businessmen, street gangs, mass murderers, sports figures, Nobel Laureates, and Colonel McCormick of the Tribune – many of the stories occur across the nation, and the book has broad appeal to lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

Chapter Authors

Thomas Anthony Durkin, William Kunkle, Don H. Reuben, Edward L. Foote, Robert F. Coleman, Michael T. Hannafan. R. Eugene Pincham, Michael J. Morrissey, Sam F. Adams, C. Barry Montgomery, Robert W. Tarun, Jo-Anne F. Wolfson, Charles B. Sklarsky, Matthias A. Lydon, Gordon B. Nash, Steven P. Handler, Michael W. Coffield, Richard A. Halprin, George N. Leighton, Thomas M. Chrisham, James S. Montana, Jr., Michael D. Monico, Marc W. Martin, Steven F. Molo, Peter C. John, Donald Hubert, Patrick A. Tuite, Raymond J. Smith, Walter Jones, Jr., Jeffrey E. Stone, Chris C. Gair, Robert L. Byman, James R. Figliulo, Philip S. Beck, Donald G. Kempf, Jr., Anton R. Valukas, Dan K. Webb, Patricia C. Bobb, Lorna E. Propes, Allan A. Ackerman, Terrence F. MacCarthy, Thomas Breen, Thomas M. Durkin, Vincent J. Connelly, Charles W. Douglas Manuael Sanchez, James D. Montgomery, William J. Martin, Robert A. Clifford, Thomas A. Demetrio

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Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s

Hailed by the Washington Post as “the one account of America in the 1920s against which all others must be measured,” Frederick Lewis Allen’s extraordinary social history takes readers back to a time of flappers and speakeasies, the first radio, unparalleled prosperity — and cataclysmic economic decline

Beginning November 11, 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson declared the end of World War I in a letter to the American public, and continuing through his defeat, Prohibition, the Big Red Scare, the rise of women’s hem lines, and the stock market crash of 1929, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, published just two years after the crash, chronicles a decade like no other. Allen, who witnessed firsthand the events he describes, makes the reader feel like part of history as it unfolds.

This bestselling, enduring account brings to life towering historical personages including J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Ford, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Al Capone, Babe Ruth, and Jack Dempsey. Allen provides insightful, in-depth analyses of President Warren G. Harding’s oil scandal, the growth of the auto industry, the decline of the family farm, and the long bull market of the late twenties. Peppering his narrative with actual stock quotes and breaking financial news, Allen tracks the major economic trends of the decade and explores the underlying causes of the crash. From the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti to the inventions, crazes, and revolutions of the day, this timeless work will continue to be savored for generations to come.

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The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia

The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America . . . until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime Family values. And by guys like Sal Polisi.

As a member of New York’s feared Colombo Family, Polisi ran The Sinatra Club, an illegal after-hours gambling den that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like John Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas—Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, and Tommy DeSimone. But the nonstop thrills of Polisi’s criminal glory days abruptly ended when he was busted for drug trafficking. Already sickened by the bloodbath that engulfed the Mob as it teetered toward extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life—a rat.

In this shocking, pulse-pounding, and, at times, darkly hilarious first-person chronicle, The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia, he paints a never-before-seen picture of a larger-than-life secret underworld that, thanks to guys like him, no longer exists.

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The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob

Even among the Mob, the Westies were feared. Starting with a partnership between two sadistic thugs, Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone, the gang rose out of the inferno of Hell's Kitchen, a decaying tenderloin slice of New York City's West Side. They became the most notorious gang in the history of organized crime, excelling in extortion, numbers running, loan sharking, and drug peddling. Upping the ante on depravity, their specialty was execution by dismemberment. Though never numbering more than a dozen members, their reign lasted for almost twenty years―until their own violent natures got the best of them, precipitating a downfall that would become as infamous as their notorious ascension into the annals of crime.

The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob.

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McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld

What do Colombian cocaine, Angolan diamonds and fake Gucci bags from China have in common?

Answer: organized crime, globalization and financial deregulation.

While the Sicilian word Mafia summons fictional images of Don Corleone wearing a tuxedo or Tony Soprano smoking a cigar, the truth is that organized crime has become a real menace on every corner of the globe, writes Misha Glenny in ``McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld''

Glenny, the author of two previous books on the Balkans, covered the unraveling of the former Soviet bloc for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service. For this book, he embarked on a tour of the new capitals of organized crime to collect anecdotes that illustrate the criminal bonanza that followed the fall of the U.S.S.R. and the liberalization of financial markets.

``The collapse of the Communist superpower, the Soviet Union, is the single most important event prompting the exponential growth of organized crime around the world in the last two decades,'' he writes.

The result: The criminal economy now accounts for 15 percent to 20 percent of the planet's gross domestic product, he says, citing figures from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and research institutes. Global GDP stood at $53.4 trillion last year, the IMF estimates.

Glenny treats us to dozens of stories culled during his journey, which began in the Balkans and ended in China, identified here as tomorrow's breeding ground of organized crime.

In India, he chases a former contract killer called Mahmoud through ``an elaborate game of musical cafes.'' When they finally meet, the retired assassin turns out to be affable, urbane and intelligent, he says.

``My experience in the Balkans led me to conclude that most murderers are not congenital psychopaths,'' he writes. They are, rather, people who are encouraged by circumstances to violate the commandment, ``Thou shalt not kill,'' he says.

In Zagreb, Glenny's rented Audi Quattro is stolen and goes on ``a mystery tour that would end several weeks later at a used car market 200 miles away in Mostar, the capital of western Herzegovina.''

In North America, he rides with a smuggler who's running pot into the U.S. from British Columbia. ``BC Bud'' sales in the U.S. represent a $6 billion-a-year industry, although they account for just 2 percent of America's annual cannabis consumption, he says.

Glenny displays a command of the subject and a knack for capturing characters and scenes. His style is conversational, as if the book were told at the dinner table.

He hops from continent to continent, mirroring the way dirty money flows from Moscow to Dubai, from Dubai to Johannesburg, and so on. Along the way, he shows how the licit and illicit economies are joined at the hip.

Consider how easy it is to launder money at a time when financing is so complicated that leading banks struggle to quantify their losses on U.S. subprime mortgages.

``In a world where legitimate institutions are unable to account properly for their dealings, the ability of criminals to launder their money through this merry-go-round of speculation greatly increased,'' Glenny says.

``McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld'' does lack a unifying narrative thread. The only character tying the various stories together is the author himself. And while we meet some victims of organized crime, including a Moldovan woman forced to prostitute herself in Israel, the ugliest side of the underworld is clouded by the intriguing tales Glenny tells of powerful mob bosses.

These are minor complaints for a book that helps explain how organized crime has managed to spread its tentacles so far and wide. Blame it on two contradictory trends, he says: ``global markets that are either insufficiently regulated, especially in the financial sector, or markets that are too closely regulated, as in the labor and agricultural sectors.''

This plays into the hands of creative and violent criminals. They easily overcome market restrictions, such as the former UN embargo on Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia. Then they wash their ill- gotten proceeds through prestigious financial institutions.

Mob bosses have been ``good capitalists and entrepreneurs,'' Glenny says. ``They valued economies of scale, just as multinational corporations did, and so they sought out overseas partners and markets to develop industries that were every bit as cosmopolitan as Shell, Nike, or McDonald's.''

Reviewed by Steve Scherer.

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"Windy City"

The mayor of Chicago is found dead at his desk just past 11 p.m. in his boxer shorts, face-down in what's left of a poisoned extra-cheese-prosciutto-and-artichoke pizza.

As the mayor's inner circle convenes, his gay chief of staff commits suicide and his longtime secretary confesses to the cops her long-ago affair with hizzoner.

Ambitious city council members can't wait until the body is cold to start maneuvering to take over.

In a city legendary for its dead voting early and often, it's no surprise that the deceased mayor continues to weigh heavily on the postmortem proceedings.

Stepping forward as "interim acting mayor" amid this delectable political chaos is Windy City's articulate and witty protagonist, Indian-born Sundaran "Sunny" Roopini.

A stand-up alderman from the 48th district, Roopini must juggle the council members' egos, dirty secrets and dealmaking while pinch-hitting for the kingpin with appearances at weddings, church services and other mundane municipal duties.

A widower whose wife was murdered, Roopini shows so much tenderness and wisdom in quelling the storm at City Hall while raising two daughters that readers will not forget soon him.

Best known as the host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, Scott Simon is also the author of the sports-fan memoir Home and Away, the non-fiction book Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, and Pretty Birds, his previous novel based in war-torn Sarajevo. But this compelling murder mystery, laden with insider big-city politics, is about Chicago and nowhere else.

Whether it's a paean to Chicago's bitter cold, or tips on how to make Indian dosas, or an embrace of the city's diverse populace, Simon leaves no doubt about his passion for the city.

The author's detailed descriptions are deep-dish, so self-indulgent sometimes that they make you feel like you've eaten too much of a good thing. And Windy City, can be a windy novel. But just as you start thinking it's all too much, Simon comes up with another great line or a sneak-up-on-you aside so clever or humorous, you read on.

For Chicago lovers and city-politics fiends, this novel is a must-read.

For everyone else, the book offers an insider's view of the kind of urban political fray — albeit fictional — that Barack Obama emerged from as an Illinois state legislator representing Chicago's South Side.

Thanks to Don Oldenburg

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Green Card Warrior: My Quest for Legal Immigration in an Illegals' System

How One Man Took On The State Department and Won

Nick Adams had it all: charisma, energy, a promising TV career, a new organization and an approved Green Card petition. The world was at his feet.

Then came the unexpected sabotage and political persecution from one individual. It began a spiral of destruction – finances, family, health and career. He almost lost it all.

Green Card Warrior: My Quest for Legal Immigration in an Illegals' System, is an explosive and startling exposé into the world of legal immigration and what many must endure to come to America.

Rising conservative star Nick Adams reveals how he was persecuted by the Obama Administration, and offers an incisive critique of the immigration system – both legal and illegal.

This eye-opening account shows how the Obama Administration has broken new ground in its intimidation and harassment of political opponents, now using its State Department to screen and select immigrants based on their politics.

In Green Card Warrior: My Quest for Legal Immigration in an Illegals' System, Adams recounts his personal tale, setting it against the larger story of the broken legal immigration system, and unfairness of illegal immigration in America today.

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Son of Scarface: A Memoir by the Grandson of Al Capone

Thirteen is a difficult age for anyone. But imagine if your beloved dad drops dead in your arms, leaving you at the mercy of your abusive mother. Then, a few months later, you learn from a phone conversation with your father's best friend that Dad was the son of Al Capone.

Not exactly a "Happy Days" childhood for Chris W. Knight. News that he was a generation removed from the most notorious crime boss in the annals of American history hit him like a St. Valentine's Day special delivery from his grandpa. But he was able to overcome all the trauma and unhappiness to earn an MBA and find success in real estate.

For two decades, the lifelong New Jersey resident wondered whether the tale of his lineage was true -- essentially that Capone had fathered Bill Knight with a woman other than his wife, then somehow hid his identity and had others bring him up. Then Chris Knight decided to find out. Son of Scarface: A Memoir by the Grandson of Al Capone recounts his efforts to trace his roots to the criminal mastermind who in the Roaring Twenties was the uncrowned king of Cicero, then Chicago.

Q. How sure are you at this point that it's true that you are Scarface Al's grandson?

A. One hundred percent, without a doubt. This kind of thing you just don't make up. For me, my dad died in my arms and told me before he died that he had another identity as a child, that he couldn't talk about it but if he did it would make my head spin. He told me about the house in Florida where he spent some of his childhood.

Q. Would you be disappointed if you were somehow presented with proof positive that you were not related?

A. I would have to seriously take into consideration how they came to that conclusion, and I would only believe it if they took the DNA straight from his body right out of the ground and spliced the DNA right in front of me. Anybody can swipe anything when it comes to DNA.

Q. Are there any developments since the book was published concerning the Capone lineage?

A. The book's been out a month and a half. I just finished doing the launch in Florida [at Al's vacation home]. The word is out. I've had two conversations with a grandson of my father's brother, Albert Francis, a k a Sonny. His family's been supportive. He said he saw a lot in my story and in me, that there is a strong connection. He's deciding whether to submit to a DNA test. He told me that as long as I didn't reveal his real identity or where he lived, he wouldn't shoot me [laughs].

Q. Do you see any irony in the fact that your father was the son of such a notorious man, yet your mother was the parent who was emotionally and physically abusive toward you and your sister?

A. That's something that I was thinking, that my mom is probably on the same level as Al Capone. Sometimes I wonder if she has syphilis [the disease that killed Al and may have been passed on to both Sonny and Bill] because she's very irrational. I can see why it's said that people marry someone who reminds them of their parents. it is ironic to see my mother's behavior is a mirror image of Al's.

Q. Is it difficult to admit the Capone heritage?

A. He's definitely a legend in American history. The bad side of Capone was that he was one of America's most notorious mob bosses. But I think my grandfather was also a kind and generous person to a lot of families. He ran soup kitchens during the Depression. People say that if you knew him, he would try to help you.

Q. Has your relationship with your mother been affected by your quest?

A. This past Christmas I forced myself to go and visit my mom, and even though she has her moments of irrationalness, she can be serious. She hasn't read the book, but she thought it would be good if I could put a positive twist on it and develop the theme of telling people to use courage and use the pain of my childhood to move forward to continue the search to reconnect with my father.

Q. You mention a "gay chromosome" and speculate that Al himself may have been gay, as you are. How has that theory been received?

A. In speaking with a few historians and reading up on Al and looking at myself, I realized that I am very similar to Al, not only in looks but in attitude and friendliness and the generous side of me. A few historians have said there were rumors that he was bisexual or gay. I heard he had a very soft voice like me. He always surrounded himself with 20 very handsome bodyguards. He never lived with his wife, so the thought had crossed my mind that there could have been a gay gene there.

Thanks to Jeff Johnson

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