An authoritative look at a once-rampant predator now at bay.
True-crime veteran Carlo (The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, 2006, etc.) chronicles the extraordinary life of Lucchese family underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso.
Such is our Mob-obsessed culture that Paul Castellano, Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, John Gotti and Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, Casso contemporaries that figure prominently in this narrative, require no introduction. Because of widespread publicity surrounding the arrest and trial of dirty NYPD cops Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito (see Jimmy Breslin’s recent The Good Rat) the public has only recently been alerted to Casso, the Mafia chieftain at whose behest the detectives killed. Within La Cosa Nostra, though, Gaspipe was famous, thanks to his vast network of law-enforcement contacts, stoolies and plants. As an inter-family bridge builder, he was celebrated for his lucrative crime schemes, feared for his expertise and readiness to use a .38 revolver and admired for his discretion and reliability. Notwithstanding his eventual decision to break his vow of omerta and cooperate with law enforcement, Casso sits today in a supermax prison, in part at least, because he knows too much. Fearful of opening him to cross-examination, prosecutors have declined to permit Casso to testify at Mafia trials where the lies fellow rat Gravano told—testimony upon which numerous convictions rest—would be exposed. Moreover, Casso knows too much about the crooked cops and FBI agents who for years helped him break laws and evade capture. Thanks to a family connection—his mother was once Casso’s wife’s best friend; his sister used to babysit the Casso children—Carlo has the real goods. He shares all the lurid particulars about a criminal career stretching from a South Brooklyn boyhood, to Casso’s Mafia-arranged, no-show union job at age 17, to his early murders, to his notoriously effective B&E crew, to his becoming a “made” man in 1974, to his making the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1990. Though the prose too often gets in the way—no observation unrepeated, no cliché unuttered—the inside information about the lifestyle, rituals, killings and betrayals is priceless.
An authoritative look at a once-rampant predator now at bay.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-142984-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rivetingly detailed, unforgivingly blunt biography of the photographer whose celebrity portraits and depictions of the sadomasochistic gay subculture ignited public controversy. More voyeuristic titillation than serious art historical examination, Morrisroe's study of Mapplethorpe (19461989) gains credibility from her exhaustive research: The New Yorkbased journalist interviewed the artist about his life on numerous occasions before his death from AIDS, spoke at length to former lovers and art world associates, and won the confidence of his long-estranged parents. The book opens with heavy irony at Mapplethorpe's Catholic funeral in Floral Park, Queens, the artist's boyhood home. His youth was an awkward period of slow self-discovery in the shadow of a gregarious older brother and domineering father. At Brooklyn's Pratt Institute in the '60s, the ROTC cadet blossomed into an acid-eating hippie art student. He soon found his muse in aspiring rock poet Patti Smith; the pair moved to Manhattan and held court from the Chelsea Hotel. The author depicts Mapplethorpe as a conniving seducer who wrote his own ticket to the art world by winning the love and support of Sam Wagstaff, a prominent and monied photography collector. With his patronage, Mapplethorpe flourished, turning his personal fascinations into compelling photo series, most frequently of gay S&M rituals, black men, bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, eroticized flowers, and celebrities. Morrisroe treats Mapplethorpe as a kind of sexualized social savant with a magic touch, making much ado of his shameless career manipulations pitting galleries and power players against one another. Pathos comes to the fore in the chapters on the '80s, in which the dying artist achieves ever-greater levels of fame and controversy. Rich in sharp observation and risquÇ revelation, an immorality tale that shamelessly mines Mapplethorpe's sad legacy for all it's worth. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Vanity Fair; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-57650-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
An inviting exercise in autobiography by Israel's defensive foreign minister. Even before the current peace process and peace prize, Shimon Peres was known for his paradoxical traits: an optimistic dove in Arab relations who nonetheless founded Israel's ``Doomsday'' atomic program. Readers who look for clues into Peres's complex psyche here will not be disappointed. An early influential headmaster of his ``believed that Zionism should and must offer far-reaching concessions to the Arabs,'' and his mentor, Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, unlike Golda Meir and others, fought hard to accept the partition plan that offered Israel a fraction of its present size. Peres was used to accommodation, as he made room for Shulamit Aloni (currently his troublesome coalition partner) in his honeymoon tent after wooing his wife with readings from Das Kapital. By age 26, Peres was already a key defense operative, but he lost many political friends by sticking with Ben-Gurion's revolt from the Labor party. Long before he would stun his nation and the world with his secret diplomatic coup in Oslo, Peres was unnerving his superiors with under-the-table deals for weaponry, the most significant being the atomic reactor project arranged with France. Peres enjoys far better relations with Israel-basher Bruno Kreisky and Israeli-killer Yassir Arafat than he does with Israel's current leader, Yitzhak Rabin. Peres swears he ``never felt any animosity'' from Rabin, yet he often responds to charges in the prime minister's ``tendentious autobiography.'' Young Shimon Persky took the name Peres because one naturalist rendered this biblical Hebrew term to mean eagle. As luck would have it, everyone else considers this bird to be a vulture. Fluid, factual, and occasionally anecdotal, this is a better- than-average campaign bio by yet another feuding Israeli hero of war and peace.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43617-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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