Paced like a fine piece of fiction, this is a handsomely written chronicle of an interesting mob character.
A definitive rags-to-riches biography of Al Capone’s “Man in Hollywood,” Johnny Rosselli (1905-1976).
In his latest biography, Server (Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing", 2006, etc.) sorts through a massive amount of information—grand jury testimony, police records, news reports, hearsay—to create a cohesive, engaging narrative of the life of a gangster and the “Los Angeles underworld” in which he lived and worked. After enduring a childhood of poverty in Boston, Rosselli plunged into the criminal world in 1920s Los Angeles, at age 19, where he excelled as a bootleg driver. By 22, he was already running his own independent race book under his newly won moniker, Handsome Johnny. “His appearance evidenced good fortune and expensive tastes,” writes the author. “Gone were the old work clothes and boots, the stubbly face and dirty fingers, replaced with a fine wardrobe [and] immaculate grooming (movie-star haircut, treated skin, manicured nails with the luster of Red Sea pearls).” At only 23, together with Jack Dragna, Rosselli became Capone’s ambassador to the wide open frontier of Los Angeles. “It had happened quickly and efficiently,” writes Server. “And it was just the beginning.” From his tenure as a producer of major film noirs and hand in launching the career of Marilyn Monroe to his pioneering involvement in entrenching the Mafia in the new frontier of Las Vegas and 1960s entanglement with Sam Giancana in a CIA–backed plan to poison Cuban president Fidel Castro, Rosselli lived an unquestionably fascinating life, and the author ably captures it from one compelling exploit to the next. Server also examines Rosselli’s friendships with Frank Sinatra and other celebrities, his part in negotiating eccentric aviator Howard Hughes’ entry into the Las Vegas crime-scape, his alleged role in JFK’s assassination, and his grim end (his decomposing body was found in a fuel drum near Miami).
Paced like a fine piece of fiction, this is a handsomely written chronicle of an interesting mob character.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-56668-5
Page Count: 544
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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