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Iroquois Crafts
By Carrie A. Lyford. 2020
There is nothing more colorful in the North American Indian history than the story of the League of the Iroquois.…
An Iroquois Indian crafts manual with photographs, and drawings of examples, historical background, patterns of clothing, bark utensils and decorative arts.I Love You Phillip Morris: A True Story Of Life, Love, And Prison Breaks
By Steve McVicker. 2003
To escape from a Texas jail or prison once is unusual. To do it four times is incredible. To do…
it four times in five years and always on a Friday the 13th is the stuff of legend. Welcome to the world of Steven Russell. Con artist. Thief. Swindler. Embezzler. Hopeless romantic. A husband and father, Russell was a church organist, prosperous businessman, and onetime Boca Raton cop before turning to his life of crime. Arrested for a string of felonies, with a specialty in fraud, his real expertise turned out to be his uncanny ability to escape from jail. Between 1993 and 1998, he orchestrated a string of prison breaks that were as audacious as they were ingenious. Using whatever unlikely materials were at handa Magic Marker, a pay phone, a walkie-talkie, a pair of stolen bright red women's stretch pantsalong with an innate talent for analytical thinking and boundless quantities of sheer nerve, Russell again and again arranged his own "early releases" from jail. Unfortunately, for Russell, staying out of jail is another matter entirely. Over the years, it became increasingly clear that Russell's talent for escape is matched only by his knack for getting arrested. One thing always seems to trump Steven Russell's careful planning, cool head, and instinct for self-preservationlove. Russell cannot resist the urge to try and spring the great love of his lifea fellow inmate named Phillip Morris. In I Love You Phillip Morris, journalist Steve McVicker goes right to the heart of this improbable-but-true story of crime, punishment, and passion. Thanks to unprecedented and exclusive access to Russell, his family, and his friends, he retraces Russell's journey from small-town businessman to flamboyant white-collar criminal and jailhouse Houdini. It's the darkly comic tale of a man with a spectacular ability to manipulate almost everyone he meets, yet who is himself helpless in the face of love.Bad Lawyer: A Memoir of Law and Disorder
By Anna Dorn. 2021
Law school was never Anna Dorn's dream. It was a profession pushed on her by her parents, teachers, society... whatever.…
It's not the worst thing that can happen to a person; as Dorn says, law school was pretty "cushy" and mostly entailed wearing leggings every day to her classes at Berkeley and playing beer pong with her friends at night. The hardest part was imagining what it would be like to actually be a lawyer one day. But then she'd think of Glenn Close on Damages and Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, and hoped for the best.After graduation, however, Dorn realized that there was nothing sexy about being a lawyer. Between the unflattering suits, sucking up to old men, and spending her days sequestered in a soul-sucking cubicle, Dorn quickly learned that being a lawyer wasn't everything Hollywood made it out to be. Oh, and she sucked at it. Not because she wasn't smart enough, but because she couldn't get herself to care enough to play by the rules.Bad Lawyer is more than just a memoir of Dorn's experiences as a less-than-stellar lawyer; it's about the less-than-stellar legal reality that exists for all of us in this country, hidden just out of sight. It's about prosecutors lying and filing inane briefs that lack any semblance of logic or reason; it's about defense attorneys sworn to secrecy-until the drinks come out and the stories start flying; and it's about judges who drink in their chambers, sexually harass the younger clerks, and shop on eBay instead of listening to homicide testimony. More than anything, this book aims to counteract the fetishization of the law as a universe based entirely on logic and reason. Exposing everything from law school to law in the media, and drawing on Dorn's personal experiences as well as her journalistic research, Bad Lawyer ultimately provides us with a fresh perspective on our justice system and the people in it, and gives young lawyers advice going forward into the 21st century.My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption
By Ian Manuel. 2021
At fourteen Ian Manuel was sentenced to life without parole. My Time Will Come is a paean to the capacity…
of the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art. &“Ian is magic. His story is difficult and heartbreaking, but he takes us places we need to go to understand why we must do better.&” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy&“My story has been told many times and by highly regarded experts in their fields—judges, prosecutors, juvenile probation officers, sociologists, journalists. But I would like to try to tell it to you myself. I have reason to believe the experts may be wrong about me. You see, today, thirty years later, I am neither in prison nor dead.&” —from My Time Will Come The United States is the only country in the world that sentences thirteen- and fourteen-year-old offenders, mostly youth of color, to life in prison without parole, regardless of the scientifically proven singularities of the developing adolescent brain—a heinous wrinkle in the scandal of mass incarceration. In 1991, Ian Manuel, then fourteen, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. In a botched mugging attempt with some older boys, he shot Debbie Baigrie, a young white mother of two, in the face. But as Bryan Stevenson, attorney and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, has insisted, none of us should be judged by only the worst thing we have ever done. Capturing the fullness of his humanity, here is Manuel&’s powerful testimony of growing up homeless in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida—a neighborhood riddled with poverty, gang violence, and drug abuse—and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances, only to find himself, partly through his own actions, imprisoned for two-thirds of his life, eighteen years of which were spent in solitary confinement. Here is the at once wrenching and inspiring story of how he endured the savagery of the United States prison system, and how his victim, an extraordinary woman, forgave him and bravely advocated for his freedom, which was achieved by a crusade on the part of the Equal Justice Initiative to address the barbarism of our judicial system and bring about &“just mercy.&” Full of unexpected twists and turns as it describes a struggle to attain the glory of redemption, My Time Will Come is a paean to the capacity of the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art—in Ian Manuel&’s case, through his dedication to writing poetry.Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir
By Jennifer Mascia. 2010
After years of crisscrossing the country, Mascia's mother finally revealed that Jennifer's early life had been spent on the lam.…
What had her parents done? The truth was more surprising than Mascia ever imagined.Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader
By Alexander Berkman. 2005
Alexander Berkman was a twentieth-century American revolutionary. Like the abolitionist John Brown before him, Berkman was hugely idealistic, ready to…
go to the furthest extreme of self-sacrifice and violence on behalf of justice and civil rights. He decided to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after reading in the newspaper that Pinkertons hired by Frick had opened fire on the Homestead strikers, killing men, women, and children. Berkman's bungled attempt cost him fifteen years in a federal penitentiary. Upon his release, he became an effective agitator against conscription and was again imprisoned and eventually deported to Russia, where he saw at first hand the early days of Bolshevism. Berkman's writings remain a lasting and impassioned record of intense political transformation. Featuring a new introduction by Howard Zinn, Life of an Anarchist contains Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Berkman's account of his years in prison; The Bolshevik Myth, his eyewitness account of the early days of the Russian Revolution; and The ABC of Anarchism, the classic text on the nature of anarchism in the twentieth century. Also included are a selection of letters between Berkman and his lifelong companion Emma Goldman, and a generous sampling from Berkman's other publications.Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity's Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity
By Chuck Sudetic, Carla Del Ponte. 2008
Carla Del Ponte won international recognition as Switzerland's attorney general when she pursued cases against the Sicilian mafia. In 1999,…
she answered the United Nations' call to become the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. In her new role, Del Ponte confronted genocide and crimes against humanity head-on, struggling to bring to justice the highest-ranking individuals responsible for massive acts of violence in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo.These tribunals have been unprecedented. They operate along the edge of the divide between national sovereignty and international responsibility, in the gray zone between the judicial and the political, a largely unexplored realm for prosecutors and judges. It is a realm whose native inhabitants-political leaders and diplomats, soldiers and spies-assume that they can commit the big crime without being held culpable. It is a realm crisscrossed by what Del Ponte calls the muro di gomma -"the wall of rubber"- a metaphor referring to the tactics government officials use to hide their unwillingness to confront the culture of impunity that has allowed persons responsible for acts of unspeakable, wholesale violence to escape accountability. Madame Prosecutor is Del Ponte's courageous and startling memoir of her eight years spent striving to serve justice.The Revolt of the Cockroach People
By Oscar Zeta Acosta. 1973
The further adventures of "Dr. Gonzo" as he defends the "cucarachas" -- the Chicanos of East Los Angeles. Before his…
mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo" a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge. In this exhilarating sequel to The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Acosta takes us behind the front lines of the militant Chicano movement of the late sixties and early seventies, a movement he served both in the courtroom and on the barricades. Here are the brazen games of "chicken" Acosta played against the Anglo legal establishment; battles fought with bombs as well as writs; and a reluctant hero who faces danger not only from the police but from the vatos locos he champions. What emerges is at once an important political document of a genuine popular uprising and a revealing, hilarious, and moving personal saga.The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer
By Anthony Bruno. 2013
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, with Ray Liotta and Chris Evans He was…
smart, merciless, and deadly. And it took someone just as tough to bring him down. A mob contract killer known as "The Iceman" for hiding a body in an ice-cream truck freezer, Richard Kuklinski boasted a personal body count of more than a hundred victims. Using guns, knives, poison, ice picks, tire irons, baseball bats, and bombs, the family man from New Jersey killed for fun, for money, to cover up his own crimes, and to satisfy his inner rage. Law enforcement officials knew all about Kuklinski and had a list of his victims, but couldn't get near him--until undercover agent Dominick Polifrone posed as a mobster and began a deadly game of cat and mouse. In this harrowing true-crime account, Anthony Bruno delves into the mind of a cold-blooded killer, chronicling the Iceman's grisly crimes and probing the bizarre dynamics of Agent Polifrone's dangerous liaison with him. For as Polifrone carefully built up a case against Kuklinksi, he knew he was running out of time--because the Iceman was planning to kill him too. "Bruno puts his writing talents to white-knuckle use with a tight focus on a killer with no human feelings."--Kirkus Reviews "Excellent . . . [re-creates] the tension and stress Polifrone experienced in fulfilling his risky undercover assignment."--Publishers WeeklyFrom the Trade Paperback edition.The Boss of Bosses: The Life of the Infamous Toto Riina Dreaded Head of the Sicilian Mafia
By Giuseppe D'Avanzo, Attilio Bolzoni. 2015
This is the true story of Totò Riina, the Cosa Nostra boss who rose from nothing to become the most…
powerful man in Sicily. The picture emerges of a bloodthirsty, power-hungry monster who, despite his lowly beginnings, is able to outmanoeuvre the other Mafia chiefs and take control of the organisation. However, the story is not just that of Riina, but also of Sicily itself. D'Avanzo and Bolzoni have transformed a complex series of events spanning several decades into a gripping narrative.In prison for 18 years now, Totò Riina still remains the dictator of the Cosa Nostra. This book tells the haunting and disturbing tale, with thorough investigation and testimony of the Sicilian Corleone.Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (Vintage International)
By Oscar Zeta Acosta. 1972
Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano layer…
and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge. Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all the rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity.American Desperado: My Life--From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset
By Evan Wright, Jon Roberts. 2011
In 2008 veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times bestselling book Generation Kill and co-writer of the…
Emmy-winning HBO series it spawned, began a series of conversations with super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the fabulously successful documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Those conversations would last three years, during which time Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de-facto “transportation chief” of the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic. As Wright’s tape recorder whirred and Roberts unburdened himself of hundreds of jaw-dropping tales, it became clear that perhaps no one in history had broken so many laws with such willful abandon. Roberts, in fact, seemed to be a prodigy of criminality – but one with a remarkable self-awareness and a fierce desire to protect his son from following the same path. American Desperado is Roberts’ no-holds-barred account of being born into Mafia royalty, witnessing his first murder at the age of seven, becoming a hunter-assassin in Vietnam, returning to New York to become -- at age 22 -- one of the city’s leading nightclub impresarios, then journeying to Miami where in a few short years he would rise to become the Medellin Cartel’s most effective smuggler. But that’s just half the tale. The roster of Roberts’ friends and acquaintances reads like a Who’s Who of the latter half of the 20th century and includes everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Richard Pryor, and O.J. Simpson to Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky, and Manuel Noriega. Nothing if not colorful, Roberts surrounded himself with beautiful women, drove his souped-up street car at a top speed of 180 miles per hour, shared his bed with a 200-pound cougar, and employed a 6”6” professional wrestler called “The Thing” as his bodyguard. Ultimately, Roberts became so powerful that he attracted the attention of the Republican Party’s leadership, was wooed by them, and even was co-opted by the CIA for which he carried out its secret agenda. Scrupulously documented and relentlessly propulsive, this collaboration between a bloodhound journalist and one of the most audacious criminals ever is like no other crime book you’ve ever read. Jon Roberts may be the only criminal who changed the course of American history. From the Hardcover edition.A Defiant Life: Thurgood Marshall and the Persistence of Racism in America
By Howard Ball. 1998
Thurgood Marshall's extraordinary contribution to civil rights and overcoming racism is more topical than ever, as the national debate on…
race and the overturning of affirmative action policies make headlines nationwide. Howard Ball, author of eighteen books on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, has done copious research for this incisive biography to present an authoritative portrait of Marshall the jurist.Born to a middle-class black family in "Jim Crow" Baltimore at the turn of the century, Marshall's race informed his worldview from an early age. He was rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because of the color of his skin. He then attended Howard University's Law School, where his racial consciousness was awakened by the brilliant lawyer and activist Charlie Houston. Marshall suddenly knew what he wanted to be: a civil rights lawyer, one of Houston's "social engineers." As the chief attorney for the NAACP, he developed the strategy for the legal challenge to racial discrimination. His soaring achievements and his lasting impact on the nation's legal system--as the NAACP's advocate, as a federal appeals court judge, as President Lyndon Johnson's solicitor general, and finally as the first African American Supreme Court Justice--are symbolized by Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that ended legal segregation in public schools. Using race as the defining theme, Ball spotlights Marshall's genius in working within the legal system to further his lifelong commitment to racial equality. With the help of numerous, previously unpublished sources, Ball presents a lucid account of Marshall's illustrious career and his historic impact on American civil rights.From the Hardcover edition.Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned
By John A. Farrell. 2011
Drawing on untapped archives and full of fresh revelations, here is the definitive biography of America's legendary defense attorney and…
progressive hero.Clarence Darrow is the lawyer every law school student dreams of being: on the side of right, loved by many women, played by Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind. His days-long closing arguments delivered without notes won miraculous reprieves for men doomed to hang. Darrow left a promising career as a railroad lawyer during the tumultuous Gilded Age in order to champion poor workers, blacks, and social and political outcasts against big business, Jim Crow, and corrupt officials. He became famous defending union leader Eugene Debs in the landmark Pullman Strike case and went from one headline case to the next--until he was nearly crushed by an indictment for bribing a jury. He redeemed himself in Dayton, Tennessee, defending schoolteacher John Scopes in the "Monkey Trial," cementing his place in history. Now, John A. Farrell draws on previously unpublished correspondence and memoirs to offer a candid account of Darrow's divorce, affairs, and disastrous finances; new details of his feud with his law partner, the famous poet Edgar Lee Masters; a shocking disclosure about one of his most controversial cases; and explosive revelations of shady tactics he used in his own trial for bribery. Clarence Darrow is a sweeping, surprising portrait of a legendary legal mind.From the Hardcover edition.The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball
By Charley Rosen. 2001
Rosen brings us for the first time the full life story of Jack Molinas, one of the greatest basketball players…
of his era, a man whose gambling addiction and hubris caused his ultimate demise. Drawing on numerous, previously unavailable first-person accounts, including Jack Molinas's own journal and trial transcripts, Rosen presents the true saga of a man who perhaps better than anyone around him understood the weaknesses of the system in which he lived--so much so that he convinced himself that he could manipulate that system to his advantage with total impunity, in a life's journey that took him from NBA play to the Mafia and the pornographic film industry, and to an ultimate tragic destiny.Zacarias, My Brother: The Making of a Terrorist
By Abd Samad Moussaoui, Florence Bouquillat. 2003
Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in the United States in August 2001. He is currently in a federal prison in Virginia,…
charged with "conspiring with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to murder thousands of innocent people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania." Moussaoui , who trained to be a pilot in Oklahoma, admits to being a member of Al-Qaeda but denies involvement in the events of September 11. He has opted to defend himself. Written by his brother, Zacarias, My Brother tells the story of Zac's life from birth to the time in 1996 when he broke contact with his family and became deeply involved with Muslim fundamentalists in London. It is a unique document about what it is to grow up a Muslim in Western Europe today and how an extremist is made. In Zacarias, My Brother, author Abd Samad Moussaoui describes the struggle that young Arab men and their families endure in Europe, seeking an education and equal opportunity, only to find most avenues of assimilation effectively barred to people of color. At the same time, he authoritatively details the techniques of the extremist sects that recruit potential terrorist cadres. Members of the Wahhabi sect have perfected a rhetoric that appeals to the wounded pride of these young Arab men, Moussaoui writes--for example, offering funds to help them complete their education. Moussaoui deplores the route taken by his brother. He is not in any way an apologist for terrorism. Even so, he shows convincingly that normal young men can end up terrorists, and suggests how and why this happens. Moussaoui shows with gripping clarity how Wahhabism distorts true Islamic faith and the threat it poses to Islam. And his book strongly suggests that the best defense against terrorist groups like the Wahhabi sect in the future is anything people can do to end racism.Something at the Texas detention facility is terribly wrong, and Tony Hefner knows it. But the guards are repeatedly instructed…
not to speak of anything they witness. In the Rio Grande Valley, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the United States, good jobs are scarce and the detention facility pays the best wages for a hundred miles. The guards follow orders and keep quiet.For six years, Tony Hefner was a security guard at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center, one of the largest immigration detention centers in America, and witnessed alarming corruption and violations of basic human rights. Officers preyed upon the very people whom they are sworn to protect. On behalf of the 1,100 men, women, and children residing there on an average day, and the 1,500 new undocumented immigrants who pass through its walls every month, this is the story of the systematic sexual, physical, financial, and drug-related abuses of detainees by guards.Up Against the Wall Motherf**er: A Memoir of the '60s, with Notes for Next Time
By Osha Neumann. 2008
They called themselves the Motherfuckers; others called them a "street gang with an analysis." Osha Neumann's thoughtful, funny, and honest…
account of his part in '60s counterculture is also an unflinching look at what all that rebellion of the past means today. The fast moving story follows the establishment of the Motherfuckers, who influenced the Yippies and members of SDS; makes vivid the art, music, and politics of the era; and reveals the colorful, often deeply strange, personalities that gave the movement its momentum. Abbie Hoffman said the Motherfuckers were "the middle-class nightmare . . . an antimedia media phenomenon simply because their name could not be printed." In the few years of its existence the group forced its way into the Pentagon during a war protest, helped occupy one of the buildings in the Columbia University takeover, and cut the fences at Woodstock to allow thousands in for free, among many other feats of radical derring-do.Progressing from a fractured family of intellectuals to rebellion in the streets of New York and on to communes in California, Newmann shows us a view of a life led in rebellion, anger, and eventually a tentative peace.The worst woman in Sydney: the life and crimes of Kate Leigh
By Leigh Straw. 2016
Matriarch of the criminal underworld ...or the Robin Hood of inner Sydney? The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel…
madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in TV's Underbelly and every other account of Sydney's criminal history from the 1920s to the 1960s. But she has never had a biography of her own. Despite having more than 100 criminal convictions to her name, Kate Leigh is also remembered as a local hero, giving money to needy families and supporting her local community through the hard times of Depression and war. Here, novelist and historian Leigh Straw teases out the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the gender stereotyping of the time to become a leading underworld figure.Bent Coppers
By Graeme McLagan. 2004
The inside story of a secret unit that has worked under cover to expose corruption in the Metropolitan Police since…
the early 1990s.'If you want a book that is genuinely 'unputdownable' read BENT COPPERS' Johnny Vaughan, THE SUN'A very engaging read - the outrageous nature of bent cops' behaviour guarantees that' SUNDAY TELEGRAPHShocked by the extent of corruption within its ranks, Scotland Yard set up a new anti-corruption unit in the early 1990s. Its members had to operate in conditions of unprecedented secrecy and they became known as the 'Ghost Squad'.Bent Coppers really did believe they were untouchable: they stole cash and property, fitted-up innocent people and sold secret information to cripple court cases. Many of the bent coppers are now in jail or awaiting trial but the battle against corruption is not over.Only now can the story of the 'Ghost Squad' be revealed. Award-winning BBC home affairs correspondent Graeme McLagan had followed the investigation since the beginning. He has interviewed undercover officers and many of the bent coppers they have exposed. this is the inside story of the 'Ghost Squad' and how it broke into the secret world of police corruption.