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Black Mass
By Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill. 2012
John Connolly and James "Whitey" Bulger grew up together on the tough streets of South Boston. Decades later in the…
mid-1970s, they met again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. Connolly had an idea, a scheme that might bring Bugler into the FBI fold and John Connolly into the Bureau's big leagues. But Bulger had other plans. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger, Black Mass is the chilling true story of what happened between them--a dark deal that spiraled out of control, leading to drug dealing, racketeering, and murder.Street Poison
By Justin Gifford. 2015
The first and definitive biography of one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim,…
né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the '40s and '50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of "street lit" masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture. You can't understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators. Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material--including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters--Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America's most infamous pimps of the 1940s and '50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford's biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature's most unique renegades.The Skies Belong to Us
By Brendan I. Koerner. 2013
In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of '60s idealism, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine.…
Over a five-year period starting in 1968, the desperate and disillusioned seized commercial jets nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to foreign lands; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when shattered Army veteran Roger Holder and mischievous party girl Cathy Kerkow managred to comandeer Western Airlines Flight 701 and flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom--a heist that remains the longest-distance hijacking in American history.More than just an enthralling story about a spectacular crime and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath, The Skies Belong to Us is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail. tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers to African despots to French movie stars. He combed through over 4,000 declassified documents and interviewed scores of key figures in the drama--including one of the hijackers, whom Koerner discovered living in total obscurity. Yet The Skies Belong to Us is more than just an enthralling yarn about a spectacular heist and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath. It is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent, and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.Finding me: a decade of darkness, a life reclaimed
By Michelle Knight, Michelle Burford. 2014
Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For…
more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world. Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken. Bestseller. 2014.As It Was: A Memoir
By Robert M Pennoyer. 2015
"Robert M. Pennoyer was born into a storied family - his maternal grandfather was the legendary J. P. Morgan. His…
irresistible memoir traces his sheltered childhood on the Gold Coast of Long Island; an adolescence overshadowed by the gathering clouds of World War II; and a young adulthood that survived one of the decisive engagements of the Pacific Theater - Iwo Jima. The author gives us as well a heartwarming account of a romance that blossomed into a lifelong matrimonial partnership and a close family life, tested nonetheless by crisis. And he chronicles a distinguished career, the early part of which was spent in the service of President Eisenhower and the latter part in private law practice and pro bono work. As It Was begins in an era of unprecedented wealth and privilege for some and great misery and poverty for others, - one that Mark Twain lampooned as the "Gilded Age," and ends, coming in effect full circle, in our own era of the One Per Cent, as the income chasm in America reopens. What divides these periods, and is so impressively portrayed here, is the rise of American Progressivism led by the two Roosevelts. Most importantly, this book is itself a demonstration of the values that boosted America on its path to greatness and for which no finer exemplar could be found than its author. It bespeaks a belief in democracy that is passionate and unshakable, and builds on a deep appreciation of the institutions that enable it. The spirit that flows through these pages may be modest, but it is also filled with an irrepressible optimism and a faith in simple values that are both uplifting and marvelously contagious. As It Was is a lesson in a life well lived, and a tonic for dark and troubled times."-- Scott Horton, author of Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare (2015), contributing editor,Harper's Magazine.The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer
By Lisa Downing. 2013
The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we…
have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizenOCoa special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely?In "The Subject of Murder," Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.That Lonely Section of Hell
By Lori Shenher. 2015
From her first assignment in 1998 to explore an increase in the number of missing women to the harrowing 2002…
interrogation of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, Lori Shenher tells a story of massive police failure-failure of the police to use the information about Pickton available to them, failure to understand the dark world of drug addiction and sex work, and failure to save more women from their killer.Shenher explains how police unwillingness to believe the women were missing or murdered, jurisdictional squabbles, and a fear of tunnel vision conspired to leave women unprotected and vulnerable to a serial killer nearly three years after she first received a tip that Pickton could be responsible. She unflinchingly reveals her own pain and psychological distress as a result of these events, which left her unable to work with or trust the police and the criminal justice system. That Lonely Section of Hell reveals the deeper truths behind the causes of this tragedy and the myriad ways the system-and society-failed to protect vulnerable people.Business or blood: Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto's last war
By Peter Edwards, Antonio Nicaso. 2015
Until Vito Rizzuto went to prison in 2006 for his role in a decades-old Brooklyn triple murder, he ruled the…
Port of Montreal, the northern gateway to the major American drug markets. A master diplomat, he won the respect of rival mafia clans, bikers and street gangs, and criminal business thrived on his turf. His family prospered and his empire grew--until one of North America's true Teflon dons finally lost his veneer. As he watched helplessly from his Colorado prison, the murders of his son and father made international headlines; the killings of his lieutenants and friends filled the pages of Canadian news; and the influence of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, spread across Montreal faster than the blood of Rizzuto's crime family. In 2012, Vito Rizzuto emerged from prison, a 66-year-old man who could carefully rebuild his criminal empire or seek bloody revenge and damn the consequences. Bestseller. 2015.It was a time of unregulated madness, and nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the…
roaring 1920s. Speakeasies thrived, gang war shootings announced Al Capone's rise to underworld domination, Chicago's corrupt political leaders fraternized with gangsters, and yellow journalism only contributed to the excesses. Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people (who should have known better) to invest as much as $30 million in phantom timberland and non-existent oil wells in Panama. When Leo's scheme finally collapsed in 1923, he vanished and the Chicago State's Attorney began an international manhunt that lasted almost a year. When finally apprehended, Leo was living a life of luxury in Nova Scotia under an assumed identity. His mysterious death in a Chicago prison topped anything in his almost-too-bizarre-to-believe life. Bestseller. Winner of the 2016 Arthur Ellis Best Non-fiction Crime Book Award. 2015.The Dark Art
By Douglas Century, Edward Follis. 2014
A highly decorated veteran DEA agent recounts his incredible undercover career and reveals the shocking links between narcotics trafficking and…
terrorismWhat exactly is undercover? From a law-enforcement perspective, undercover is the art of skillfully eliciting incriminating statements. From a personal and psychological standpoint, it's the dark art of gaining trust--then manipulating that trust. In the simplest terms, it's playing a chess game with the bad guy, getting him to make the moves you want him to make--but without him knowing you're doing so. Edward Follis mastered the chess game--The Dark Art--over the course of his distinguished twenty-seven years with the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he bought eightballs of coke in a red Corvette, negotiated multimillion-dollar deals onboard private King Airs, and developed covert relationships with men who were not only international drug-traffickers but--in some cases--operatives for Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Shan United Army, or the Mexican federation of cartels.Follis was, in fact, one of the driving forces behind the agency's radical shift from a limited local focus to a global arena. In the early nineties, the DEA was primarily known for doing street-level busts evocative of Miami Vice. Today, it uses high-resolution-optics surveillance and classified cutting-edge technology to put the worst narco-terror kingpins on the business end of "stealth justice" delivered via Predator drone pilots.Spanning five continents and filled with harrowing stories about the world's most ruthless drug lords and terrorist networks, Follis's memoir reads like a thriller. Yet every word is true, and every story is documented. Follis earned a Medal of Valor for his work, and coauthor Douglas Century is a pro at shaping and telling just this kind of story. The first and only insider's account of the confluence between narco-trafficking and terrorist organizations, The Dark Art is a page-turning memoir that will electrify you from page one.Abraham
By Alan M. Dershowitz. 2015
Part of the Jewish Encounter seriesOne of the world's best-known attorneys gives us a no-holds-barred history of Jewish lawyers: from…
the biblical Abraham through modern-day advocates who have changed the world by challenging the status quo, defending the unpopular, contributing to the rule of law, and following the biblical command to pursue justice. The Hebrew Bible's two great examples of advocacy on behalf of problematic defendants--Abraham trying to convince God not to destroy the people of Sodom, and Moses trying to convince God not to destroy the golden-calf-worshipping Children of Israel--established the template for Jewish lawyers for the next 4,500 years. Whether because throughout history Jews have found themselves unjustly accused of crimes ranging from deicide to ritual child murder to treason, or because the biblical exhortation that "justice, justice, shall you pursue" has been implanted in the Jewish psyche, Jewish lawyers have been at the forefront in battles against tyranny, in advocating for those denied due process, in negotiating for just and equitable solutions to complex legal problems, and in efforts to ensure a fair trial for anyone accused of a crime. Dershowitz profiles Jewish lawyers well-known and unheralded, admired and excoriated, victorious and defeated--and, of course, gives us some glimpses into the gung-ho practice of law, Dershowitz-style. Louis Brandeis, Theodor Herzl, Judah Benjamin, Max Hirschberg, René Cassin, Bruno Kreisky, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Irwin Cotler are just a few of the "idol smashers, advocates, collaborators, rescuers, and deal makers" who helped to change history. Dershowitz's thoughts on the future of the Jewish lawyer are presented with the same insight, shrewdness, and candor that are the hallmarks of his more than four decades of writings on the law and how it is (and should be!) practiced.From the Hardcover edition. his writings on the law and how it is (and should be!) practiced.The Valley of the Shadow of Death
By Jeff Snipes, Kermit Alexander, Alex Gerould. 2015
In this heart-wrenching memoir, former NFL star Kermit Alexander tells the devastating true story of the horrific massacre of his…
family and his subsequent years of despair, followed by a spiritual renewal that showed him a way to rebuild his family and reclaim his life.On the morning of August 31, 1984, in the South Central section of Los Angeles, three armed men broke into a house, brutally murdering two women and two young boys. The victims were Ebora Alexander, Dietra Alexander, Damani Garner, and Damon Bonner--the mother, sister, and nephews of retired All-Pro cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers Kermit Alexander. In his own words, Kermit Alexander finally shares the full story of what happened to his loved ones and the aftermath of that tragic day. He recounts the hours leading up to the massacre, and how afterward he lost himself in the LA underworld, pleading, bribing, and threatening in a search for answers. He describes his journey through the "wilderness" of despair--the years of isolation living out of his car, broke, depressed, and sick. We also learn about his coming-of-age in 1950s LA, the following decade he spent in the NFL, the events leading up to that fateful August day, and finally the shocking truth behind the murders. Kermit opens up about his darkest hours, but also what it took to turn his life around, rebuild his family, and ultimately find peace. Ominous and intense, powerful and uplifting, tragic and triumphant, The Valley of the Shadow of Death is more than a rendering of one man's adversity; it's testament to the value of family and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming loss.True Story
By Michael Finkel. 2015
Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Jonah Hill & James Franco and Distributed by Fox Searchlight PicturesWhen New York Times…
reporter Michael Finkel meets accused killer Christian Longo-who has taken on Finkel's identity-his investigation morphs into an unforgettable game of cat and mouse. True Story weaves a spellbinding tale of murder, love, deceit, and redemption, following Finkel's relentless pursuit of the shocking truth.Policing the Fringe
By Charles Scheideman. 2009
From the 1960s through the 1980s, RCMP Sergeant Charlie Scheideman spent much of his time patrolling the "dark corners of…
the Interior of British Columbia" where "the citizens would meet the modern criteria for redneck: if their veranda collapsed it would kill more than four dogs; they think 'harrass' is two words, and so on." Such places weren't much fun to police but they were full of characters, many of whom make their way into Charlie's entertaining book, Policing the Fringe. We meet Walter and Wilbur, two Hixon hillbillies who went on a bender and decided it would be fun to stagger out onto the Cariboo Highway with a rifle and hold up passing cars, which worked well enough until they held up a motorhome from Alaska that turned out to be better armed than they were. We meet Petre, the hard-working hermit who was cheated out of his savings by three slick-talking mining promoters and waited to take his revenge-with an axe.With wry humour and a policeman's eye for relevant detail, Scheideman recounts events that range from the ridiculous to the horrific to the tragic. Once he stopped a car in the Fraser Canyon driven by three normally responsible American fishermen, who on this occasion were careening wildly from one guard rail to another. Their defence? They had failed to allow for the added kick of Canadian beer. His most searing memory was of waiting for the embers of a burned house to cool enough so he could retrieve the bodies of two small victims while in a nearby house, party-goers kept right on partying. One of the most revealing accounts ever written about policing in small-town Canada, this book bristles with unforgettable stories about the author's 27 years working on the RCMP's front lines. It will give readers new respect for the men and women who patrol Canada's backroads-both because of the extremely taxing work they do and the good spirit with which they do it.Smokescreen
By Robert Sabbag. 2013
With his drug-smuggling documentary short on financing, moving marijuana seemed the obvious way for cinematographer Allen Long to raise the…
necessary cash. Millions of dollars later the film had not been made, but Long's own life as a pioneering pot smuggler had played out like a Hollywood movie... seat-of-the-pants flights in a decrepit DC3 into the Colombian badlands, numerous near misses with law enforcement... fast boats, fashion models, fortunes earned and blown... From Mexico to Marin County, from the boardrooms of Manhattan to the midnight streets of Miami, Allen Long's true story is as entertaining as the greatest fiction, a hilarious piece of hair-raising reportage that will keep your pulse racing to the very last page.Robert Sabbag is the bestselling author of the classic Snowblind, Down Around Midnight and other works of nonfiction. His journalism appears in Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, New York, Playboy, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other publications. He is co-writer of the film Witness Protection, based on his The New York Times Magazine cover story "The Invisible Family." It was nominated for two Golden Globe awards, including Best Picture.One Righteous Man
By Arthur Browne. 2015
A history of African Americans in New York City from the 1910s to 1960, told through the life of Samuel…
Battle, the New York Police Department's first black officer. When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City's first African American cop in the second decade of the twentieth century, he had to fear his racist colleagues as much as criminals. He had to be three times better than his white peers, and many times more resilient. His life was threatened. He was displayed like a circus animal. Yet, fearlessly claiming his rights, he prevailed in a four-decade odyssey that is both the story of one man's courageous dedication to racial progress and a harbinger of the divisions between police and the people they serve that plague twenty-first-century America. By dint of brains, brawn, and an outsized personality, Battle rode the forward wave of African American history in New York. He circulated among renowned turn-of-the-century entertainers and writers. He weathered threatening hostility as a founding citizen of black Harlem. He served as "godfather" to the regiment of black soldiers that won glory in World War I as the "Hellfighters of Harlem." He befriended sports stars like Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Sugar Ray Robinson, and he bonded with legendary tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Along the way, he mentored an equally smart, equally tough young man in a still more brutal fight to integrate the New York Fire Department. At the close of his career, Battle looked back proudly on the against-all-odd journey taken by a man who came of age as the son of former slaves in the South. He had navigated the corruption of Tammany Hall, the treachery of gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz, the anything-goes era of Prohibition, the devastation of the Depression, and the race riots that erupted in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s. By then he was a trusted aide to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and a friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Realizing that his story was the story of race in New York across the first half of the century, Battle commissioned a biography to be written by none other than Langston Hughes, the preeminent voice of the Harlem Renaissance. But their eighty-thousand-word collaboration failed to find a publisher, and has remained unpublished since. Using Hughes's manuscript, which is quoted liberally throughout this book, as well as his own archival research and interviews with survivors, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Arthur Browne has created an important and compelling social history of New York, revealed a fascinating episode in the life of Langston Hughes, and delivered the riveting life and times of a remarkable and unjustly forgotten man, setting Samuel Battle where he belongs in the pantheon of American civil rights pioneers.Blood Aces
By Doug Swanson. 2014
The astonishing story of Benny Binion--a rip-roaring saga of murder, money, and the making of Las Vegas Benny Binion was…
many things: a cowboy, a pioneering casino owner, a gangster, a killer, and founder of the hugely successful World Series of Poker. Blood Aces tells the story of Binion's crucial role in shaping modern Las Vegas. From a Texas backwater, Binion rose to prominence on a combination of vision, determination, and brutal expediency. His formula was simple: run a good business, cultivate the big boys, kill your enemies, and own the cops. Through a mix of cold-bloodedness, native intelligence, folksiness, and philanthropy, Binion became one of the most revered figures in the history of gambling, and his showmanship, shrewdness, and violence would come to dominate the Vegas scene. Veteran journalist Doug J. Swanson uses once-secret government documents and dogged reporting to show how Binion destroyed his rivals and outsmarted his adversaries--including J. Edgar Hoover. As fast paced as any thriller, Blood Aces tells a story that is unmatched in the annals of American criminal justice, a vital yet untold piece of this country's history.Tragedy on Jackass Mountain
By Charles Scheideman. 2011
Former RCMP Sergeant Charlie Scheideman, author of Policing the Fringe: The Curious Life of a Small-Town Mountie, is back with…
the same wry humour and a new collection of incredible stories drawn from his twenty-seven years of patrolling the small communities of the interior of British Columbia.These new adventures have him re-polishing his boots and relaying untold tales, such as the lone officer who takes on three legendary hard-fighting drunks, earning him the respect of the citizens of Prince George including the louts he single-handedly flattened. An escape from a youth detention centre takes a troubled young man to new heights-in a stolen airplane-that he narrowly survives after crashing into a mountainside. Here too are stories conveying the sad truth and tragic consequences of all-too-common alcohol abuse, such as when an innocent man survives an alcohol-induced multi-vehicle accident on Jackass Mountain-twice-only to be taken by a determined Grim Reaper as he aids another motorist. Scheideman illustrates that "fate looks after some of us" in another story where the extremely drunk driver and passengers of a violent single car accident miraculously survive.The strangest things seem to happen in isolated towns, and Scheideman's latest assortment of intriguing tales recounts more of his experiences from the absurd to tragic. This new collection leaves the reader with renewed admiration and wonder for the men and women who uphold the law in some of BC's more lawless regions.One hour in Paris: a true story of rape and recovery
By Karyn L Freedman. 2014
Philosopher Karyn L. Freedman travels back to a Paris night in 1990 when she was twenty-two and, in one violent…
hour, her life was changed forever by a brutal rape. We follow Freedman from an apartment in Paris to a French courtroom, from a trauma centre in Toronto to a rape clinic in Africa. At a time when as many as one in three women in the world have been victims of sexual assault and when many women are still ashamed to come forward, Freedman's book is a moving and essential look at how survivors cope and persevere. Winner of the 2015 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. 2014.Gun, Needle, Spoon
By Patrick O'Neil. 2015
This memoir follows a punk rock pioneer on his slide into drug abuse and life as an armed robber, all…
the way through life in recovery and what it's like to look back on those times, knowing all the while that he is still under the threat of three strikes, a twenty-five-to-life prison sentence waiting. He has no choice but to deal with it all drug free.During punk rock's heyday, Patrick O'Neil worked at the San Francisco's legendary Mabuhay Gardens. He went on to become the road manager for Dead Kennedys and Flipper, as well as T.S.O.L. and the Subhumans. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.