A fine backgrounder and basic guide to American mob war stories to the middle of the 20th century. (16-page b&w photo...
A particularly well-qualified reporter offers a broad survey of an industry that, as it destroyed the competition, regularly co-opted, enlisted, out-thought, and out-gunned sheriffs and G-men.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Mafia, though J. Edgar Hoover tried to pretend otherwise. But, according to this juicy account, organized crime has been less organized and more a loose confederation of geographic fiefdoms. Reppetto should know. The son of a professional gambler who did business with the “outfit,” he is himself a former Chicago commander of detectives, longtime president of NYC’s Citizens Crime Commission, and author of NYPD: A City and Its Police (2000). His tale covers mob activity from the 1880s through the 1950s, starting in New Orleans with the birth of the indigenous Mafia, as distinguished from the Camorra and the Black Hand. Still-disorganized gang doings spread to the heartland and beyond. Chicago, under the management first of Johnny Torrio and later of clumsy Al Capone, hosted counterfeiting and prostitution. New York, initially overseen by Arnold Rothstein, soon battled over artichokes, kosher chickens, and the rag trade. The big time came with Prohibition, a wonderful opportunity for crooks and cops alike. The story continues in LA, Detroit, Vegas, and Miami, with Thomas Dewey, Estes Kefauver, and the overhyped Eliot Ness chasing the bad guys. The familiar tales, from the Valentine’s Day massacre to Frank Costello’s hand-twisting on national TV, are related with the alert perspective of a street-smart cop. Dutch Shultz’s strange, poetic deathbed ramblings prompt the aside, “Dutch had not previously enjoyed a literary reputation.” Chicago florist Dion O’Bannion “sometimes supplied not only the posies but the corpse.” Supporting players include Duffy the Goat, Mad Dog Coll, Roxy Vanilla, Tony the Hat, and many capos and soldiers. Minor details may differ from other texts, but Reppetto’s reporting touches all bases (excluding recent events) vividly and authoritatively.
A fine backgrounder and basic guide to American mob war stories to the middle of the 20th century. (16-page b&w photo insert, not seen)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2004
ISBN: 0-8050-7210-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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