The Chicago Syndicate: Books
The Mission Impossible Backpack

Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

The Bomber Mafia by @Gladwell #TheBomberMafia

In The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?

In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?”

Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.


Saturday, February 20, 2021

Pablo Escobar: My Father

Until now, we believed that everything had been said about the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the most infamous drug kingpin of all time, but these versions have always been told from the outside, never from the intimacy of his own home.

More than two decades after the full-fledged manhunt finally caught up with the king of cocaine, Juan Pablo Escobar travels to the past to reveal an unabridged version of his father―a man capable of committing the most extreme acts of cruelty while simultaneously professing infinite love for his family.

Pablo Escobar: My Father, is not the story of a child seeking redemption for his father, but a shocking look at the consequences of violence and the overwhelming need for peace and forgiveness.


Friday, January 29, 2021

Strongmen - Mussolini to the Present, by Expert Author Ruth Ben-Ghiat @RuthBenGhiat

What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped).

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin—enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America. In Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future.

For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators.

They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power.

Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos.

No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country.

Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.


Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Second City Sinners - True Crime from Historic Chicago's Deadly Streets #BookRecommendation

Countless crimes have riveted Chicago and its surrounding communities throughout history. Second City Sinners offers front-row seats to the Haymarket Riot that exploded across the city in 1886, then bleeds through the historic back alleys, skirting past a murderous butcher, the Black Hand, Tommy O'Connor's jailbreak, and John Dillinger's final flick at the Biograph Theater. In the courtroom, witness Clarence Darrow in 1894 as he defends the man who murdered Chicago's mayor, and then again in 1924 as Darrow attempts to save the young men who tried to plot the perfect crime.

Many of the voices of these historic characters come from the journalists of their era, reporting on life and death in Chicago. Chicago Sun-Times journalist Jon Seidel takes readers back in time to the days when H. H. Holmes lurked in his "Murder Castle" and guys named Al Capone and John Dillinger ruled the underworld. Drawing upon years of reporting, and with special access to the Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times archives, Jon Seidel explains how men such as Nathan Leopold, Richard Loeb and Richard Speck tried to get away with history's most disturbing crimes.

Second City Sinners: True Crime from Historic Chicago’s Deadly Streets, is published by Lyons Press and is available in hardcover, on Kindle or Nook, or as an audiobook.


Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence - by Frank Figliuzzi @FrankFigliuzzi1 - is Loaded with Fidelity, Bravery, & Integrity

The FBI’s former head of counterintelligence delivers a field-tested playbook for unlocking individual and organizational excellence, based on the FBI’s fiercely protected code of conduct and illustrated through dramatic stories from his own storied career

Frank Figliuzzi was the "Keeper of the Code," appointed the FBI’s Chief Inspector by then-Director Robert Mueller. Charged with overseeing sensitive internal inquiries, shooting reviews, and performance audits, he ensured each employee met the Bureau's exacting standards of performance, integrity, and conduct. Now, drawing on his distinguished career, Figliuzzi reveals how the Bureau achieves its extraordinary standard of excellence—from the training of new recruits in "The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence" to the Bureau's rigorous maintenance of its standards up and down the organization. Unafraid to identify FBI execs who erred, he cites them as the exceptions that prove the rule.

All good codes of conduct have one common trait: they reflect the core values of an organization. Individuals, companies, schools, teams, or any group seeking to codify their rules to live by must first establish core values. Figliuzzi has condensed the Bureau’s process of preserving and protecting its core values into what he calls “The Seven C’s”. If you can adapt the concepts of Code, Conservancy, Clarity, Consequences, Compassion, Credibility, and Consistency, you can instill and preserve your values against all threats, internal and external. This is how the FBI does it.

Figliuzzi’s role in the FBI gave him a unique opportunity to study patterns of conduct among high-achieving, ethical individuals and draw conclusions about why, when and how good people sometimes do bad things. Part pulse-pounding memoir, part practical playbook for excellence, The FBI Way shows readers how to apply the lessons he’s learned to their own lives: in business, management, and personal development.


Friday, July 10, 2020

As Disney Begins their Phased Reopening Tomorrow, Check Out the Story of "Herbert Blitzstein and the Mickey Mouse Mafia" #DisneyMagicMoments

Herbert Blitzstein and the Mickey Mouse Mafia, is a story from the anthology Masters of True Crime, which spans murder cases from the beginning of the 20th century to today.

This is a must-hear for fans of true crime and will also be compelling to mystery and thriller listeners.


Wednesday, July 08, 2020

The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice

The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice.

The incredible true story of America's original―and forgotten―capital of vice

Back in the days before Vegas was bigThe Vapors, when the Mob was at its peak and neon lights were but a glimmer on the horizon, a little Southern town styled itself as a premier destination for the American leisure class. Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, Art Deco splendor, and America’s original national park―as well as horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless backrooms and brothels, and some of the country’s most bald-faced criminals.

Gangsters, gamblers, and gamines: all once flocked to America’s forgotten capital of vice, a place where small-town hustlers and bigtime high-rollers could make their fortunes, and hide from the law. The Vapors is the extraordinary story of three individuals―spanning the golden decades of Hot Springs, from the 1930s through the 1960s―and the lavish casino whose spectacular rise and fall would bring them together before blowing them apart.

Hazel Hill was still a young girl when legendary mobster Owney Madden rolled into town in his convertible, fresh off a crime spree in New York. He quickly established himself as the gentleman Godfather of Hot Springs, cutting barroom deals and buying stakes in the clubs at which Hazel made her living―and drank away her sorrows. Owney’s protégé was Dane Harris, the son of a Cherokee bootlegger who rose through the town’s ranks to become Boss Gambler. It was his idea to build The Vapors, a pleasure palace more spectacular than any the town had ever seen, and an establishment to rival anything on the Vegas Strip or Broadway in sophistication and supercharged glamour.

In this riveting work of forgotten history, native Arkansan David Hill plots the trajectory of everything from organized crime to America’s fraught racial past, examining how a town synonymous with white gangsters supported a burgeoning black middle class. He reveals how the louche underbelly of the South was also home to veterans hospitals and baseball’s spring training grounds, giving rise to everyone from Babe Ruth to President Bill Clinton. Infused with the sights and sounds of America’s entertainment heyday―jazz orchestras and auctioneers, slot machines and suited comedians―The Vapors is an arresting glimpse into a bygone era of American vice.


Friday, June 26, 2020

Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia, and Racketeers in Michigan's Vacationlands

Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia, and Racketeers in Michigan's Vacationlands.

Gangsters play an important and colorful role in Michigan history. But what were they doing in Michigan's vacationlands?

Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia, and Racketeers in Michigan's Vacationlands, provides the fascinating account of truth and myth. Al Capone, the Purple Gang, Fred "Killer" Burke, additional Public Enemies and many other hoodlums found their way Up North in fact or fiction. Some came for gambling, bootlegging, kidnapping, and murder. Others just wanted some rest and relaxation.

For the first time, the whole colorful story can be told. Gangsters Up North draws on newspaper accounts, numerous interviews, and much unpublished material to paint the real picture of mobsters and their associates in Michigan's northlands.


Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Released Today: The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir by Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.

The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.

He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.

Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”

The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.




Monday, June 15, 2020

Broken by @DonWinslow - One of America’s Greatest Living Crime Writers

No matter how you come into this world, you come out broken . . .

In six intense short novels connected by the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt and redemption, Broken is #1 international bestseller Don Winslow at his nerve-shattering, heart-stopping, heartbreaking best.

In Broken, he creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops struggling with life on and off the job, private detectives, dope dealers, bounty hunters and fugitives, the lost souls driving without headlights through the dark night on the American criminal highway.

With his trademark blend of insight, humanity, humor, action and the highest level of literary craftsmanship, Winslow delivers a collection of tales that will become classics of crime fiction.


Thursday, May 28, 2020

Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio Reach Deal on "Killers of the Flower Moon" with Paramount and Apple - The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

After months of ironing out budget concerns over Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” adaptation, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Paramount has enlisted Apple to get the film over the hump.

Sources tell Variety that Paramount will still distribute the murder mystery drama, with Apple coming on to finance the pic and also serve as the film’s creative studio. Deals still have not closed, but sources add that they’re very likely to in the coming days.

Imperative Entertainment, whose partners Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas acquired the book in 2016, will produce the film. Imperative first bought the book and would later bring on Scorsese and DiCaprio to reteam on the project before bringing it to Paramount.

Based on David Grann’s non-fiction book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in 1920s Oklahoma, where the newly created Bureau of Investigation began investigating a string of murders of wealthy Osage Indians who had been granted revenue rights to oil discovered under their lands. The book carries the subtitle “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.”

For months, the studio and producers had been back and forth on the film’s budget, which those close to the project said ranged between $180 million and $200 million, leading to rumblings about whether the movie would stay at Paramount, move to another studio or go to a streamer like Netflix, which just produced Scorsese’s “The Irishman.”

While there was a time when a move to a streamer was in play, sources close to the director say that, while he was willing for “The Irishman” to appear on a streaming platform, he always envisioned that “Killers of the Flower Moon” would be a theatrical release, with his reps pushing that it stay that way.

Though deals are expected to close for all parties, a production start date is still up in the air, especially when it comes to DiCaprio’s schedule. While the studio and producers were figuring out what would happen with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” sources say the Oscar winner was looking at a number of projects to do before it, including Adam McKay’s next film for Netflix. That movie also stars Jennifer Lawrence, and could possibly go into production before “Killers of the Flower Moon” if DiCaprio were to sign on.

This marks another major move into the film world for Apple after it acquired the rights to the Tom Hanks pic “Greyhound” from Sony for $70 million. It previously co-produced “On the Rocks” with A24, which stars Bill Murray with Sofia Coppola directing.

It marks the sixth collaboration between DiCaprio and Scorsese, who last teamed on 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Thanks to Justin Kroll.


Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the @FBI

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history
     
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

In Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan

Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan.

In this unorthodox chronicle of the rise of Japan, Inc., Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa, gives us a fresh perspective on the economic miracle and near disaster that is modern Japan.

Through the eyes of Nick Zappetti, a former GI, former black marketer, failed professional wrestler, bungling diamond thief who turned himself into "the Mafia boss of Tokyo and the king of Rappongi," we meet the players and the losers in the high-stakes game of postwar finance, politics, and criminal corruption in which he thrived. Here's the story of the Imperial Hotel diamond robbers, who attempted (and may have accomplished) the biggest heist in Tokyo's history. Here is Rikidozan, the professional wrestler who almost single-handedly revived Japanese pride, but whose own ethnicity had to be kept secret. And here is the story of the intimate relationships shared by Japan's ruling party, its financial combines, its ruthless criminal gangs, the CIA, American Big Business, and perhaps at least one presidential relative. Here is the underside of postwar Japan, which is only now coming to light.

"A fascinating look at some fascinating people who show how democracy advances hand in hand with crime in Japan."--Mario Puzo

Monday, March 30, 2020

Transnational Organized Crime and Natural Resources Trafficking: Funding Conflict and Stealing from the World's Most Vulnerable Citizens

Transnational Organized Crime and Natural Resources Trafficking: Funding Conflict and Stealing from the World's Most Vulnerable Citizens, describes and analyzes conflict commodities, which the author, Donald R. Liddick Jr., defines as “high-value commodities trafficked in by networks of transnational criminals who use the illicitly derived proceeds to finance armed conflict and loot natural resource wealth from national treasuries.”

Each chapter examines a different commodity or set of commodities that have become the province of transnational organized crime networks: diamonds, ivory, rhino horn, timber, lapis lazuli, jade, rare minerals, gold, and oil receive scholarly analyses across multiple dimensions, including the structure and operation of criminal networks, the social and environmental consequences of the various conflict commodities trades, and the full range of palliative responses.

The book provides coverage of all the players involved, from high-ranking government officials to insurgent groups and terrorists. The work also enumerates the array of human rights abuses associated with the traffic in conflict commodities


Monday, March 23, 2020

Organized Crime: The Essentials

Organized Crime: The Essentials, provides students with an engaging introduction to the complex and pernicious world of organized crimeOrganized Crime.

Students learn key concepts and principles within the discipline and study real-world examples of organized criminal activity.

The text demonstrates how organized crime has adapted to changing times, become more sophisticated, and embedded itself into the fabric of economic, political, and social life in many nations around the world.


Tuesday, January 14, 2020

The Doctor Broad: A Mafia Love Story

There are people in the know who say that Barbara Roberts caused the downfall of the New England Mafia. She did this, not by killing someone, or sending someone to jail, but by keeping someone alive, and out of prison, for about a year too long.

The Doctor Broad: A Mafia Love Story, is the true story of a devout Catholic schoolgirl who grows up to be a physician, an atheist, feminist, anti-war activist – as well as a Mob doctor and Mob mistress. The man she keeps alive and out of prison is Raymond L. S. Patriarca, the long-time head of the New England Mafia.

Now in his early seventies, Patriarca is in poor health, although he tries to hide this. A long-time diabetic, he has known heart disease and has recently undergone a toe amputation when he is arrested on capital charges relating to an old murder, and taken to the Rhode Island State Police Barracks in Scituate. Barbara Roberts takes him on as a patient that night, and her world is forever changed.

Her testimony in various courts that he is too sick to stand trial earns her the enmity of police, FBI agents, the Providence Journal newspaper, and some of her fellow physicians. But the care of Raymond is not the only stressor in her life. The father of her youngest child is suing her in Family Court for common law divorce, palimony, and custody of their young daughter on the grounds that she is an unfit mother. Her oldest daughter suffers a nervous breakdown. She is fighting a trumped-up felony charge of breaking and entering. And less than a year after becoming Raymond’s physician and protector, she begins a clandestine affair with the alleged #3 man in the New England Mafia, Louis “Baby Shanks” Manocchio. Two years later he is convicted of accessory and conspiracy to murder and sentenced to two consecutive life years in prison, plus ten years.

This is not just a Mafia story. This memoir traces Barbara Roberts’ life story from a now vanished world almost to the present. Her commitment to feminism and medicine leads her into unexpected byways. She travels a path she never foresaw into moral dilemmas she never envisioned. It is the story of a woman born into one world who comes of age in another; who expects to live one life but finds herself ad-libbing something very different; who faces challenges undreamt of by her mother, while providing a new paradigm for her daughters.


Monday, December 30, 2019

Mafia Spies: The Inside Story of the CIA, Gangsters, JFK, and Castro

From bestselling author and the producer of the hit cable series Masters of Sex, Thomas Maier, comes a true story of espionage and mobsters, based on the never-before-released JFK Files.

From Vegas to Miami to Havana, the shocking connections between the CIA, the mob, and Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack—with new revelations and details. Mafia Spies is the definitive account of America’s most remarkable espionage plots ever—with CIA agents, mob hitmen, “kompromat” sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing devices together in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue.

In the early 1960s, two top gangsters, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, were hired by the CIA to kill Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, only to wind up murdered themselves amidst Congressional hearings and a national debate about the JFK assassination.

Mafia Spies: The Inside Story of the CIA, Gangsters, JFK, and Castro, revolves around the outlaw friendship of these two mob buddies and their fascinating world of CIA spies, fellow Mafioso in Chicago, Cuban exile commandos in Miami, beautiful Hollywood women, famous entertainers like Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack in Las Vegas, Castro’s own spies in Havana and his double agents hidden in Florida, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI snooping, and the Kennedy administration’s “Get Castro” obsession in Washington.

Thomas Maier is among the first to take full advantage of the National Archives’ 2017–18 release of the long-suppressed JFK files, many of which deal with the CIA’s top secret anti-Castro operation in Florida and Cuba. With several new investigative findings, Mafia Spies is a spy exposé, murder mystery, and shocking true story that recounts America’s first foray into the assassination business, a tale with profound impact for today’s Donald Trump era. Who killed Johnny and Sam—and why wasn’t Castro assassinated despite the CIA’s many clandestine efforts?


Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Mafia Summit: J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedy Brothers, and the Meeting That Unmasked the Mob

Mafia Summit: J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedy Brothers, and the Meeting That Unmasked the Mob, is the true story of how a small-town lawman in upstate New York busted a Cosa Nostra conference in 1957, exposing the Mafia to America

In a small village in upstate New York, mob bosses from all over the country—Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joe Bonanno, Joe Profaci, Cuba boss Santo Trafficante, and future Gambino boss Paul Castellano—were nabbed by Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell as they gathered to sort out a bloody war of succession.

For years, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had adamantly denied the existence of the Mafia, but young Robert Kennedy immediately recognized the shattering importance of the Appalachian summit. As attorney general when his brother JFK became president, Bobby embarked on a campaign to break the spine of the mob, engaging in a furious turf battle with the powerful Hoover.

Detailing mob killings, the early days of the heroin trade, and the crusade to loosen the hold of organized crime, fans of Gus Russo and Luc Sante will find themselves captured by this momentous story. Reavill scintillatingly recounts the beginning of the end for the Mafia in America and how it began with a good man in the right place at the right time.


Friday, November 22, 2019

Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination

John F. Kennedy's assassination launched a frantic search to find his killers. It also launched a flurry of covert actions by Lyndon Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, and other top officials to hide the fact that in November 1963 the United States was on the brink of invading Cuba, as part of a JFK-authorized coup. The coup plan's exposure could have led to a nuclear confrontation with Russia, but the cover-up prevented a full investigation into Kennedy's assassination, a legacy of secrecy that would impact American politics and foreign policy for the next 45 years. It also allowed two men who confessed their roles in JFK's murder to be involved in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1968.

Exclusive interviews and newly declassified files from the National Archives document in chilling detail how three mob bosses were able to prevent the truth from coming to light – until now. Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination.


Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK

Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK, reveals, for the first time, John Kennedy's and Robert Kennedy's plan for a coup in Cuba on December 1, 1963 — a plan that involved a U.S. military invasion. Unique, distinctly different, and far more advanced than any previously disclosed operation, this plan is corroborated by many declassified military and CIA documents that have never been quoted in any book before. It provides the missing piece of the puzzle regarding JFK's murder, and explains why Bobby Kennedy told close associates that the Mafia was behind his brother's assassination.

The Mafia had managed to infiltrate the Kennedys' intended coup. Ultimate Sacrifice describes and documents an attempt they made to kill JFK in a motorcade several days prior to Dallas. This attempt had more than a dozen parallels to Dallas.

Building on the work of the seven governmental committees that investigated aspects of JFK's assassination, the four million documents that were declassified in the 1990s, and exclusive interviews with many Kennedy insiders, the authors are able to tell the full story of these incidents.


  • Ultimate Sacrifice Makes News with Kennedy's Cuba Coup Plan
  • New History Reveals Previously Unknown CIA Code Name — As Well As Linked Assassination Attempt



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