Despite few groundbreaking insights, this is entertaining, vivid cultural history.
A swinging, blood-drenched history about the symbiotic relationship between jazz and organized crime through much of the 20th century.
In this steamy, noirish account of the Jazz Age and beyond, similar in spirit to English’s Havana Nocturne and other books, the author takes readers from the bordellos of New Orleans and the speak-easies of Chicago to the tropical clubs of Havana and the desert empire of Vegas. The music provides the soundtrack to a wide range of illicit activity, which generated revenues that allowed the mob to flourish and to launder money from less legitimate endeavors. Within the strictures of so-called respectable society, both the Black musicians who developed jazz and the immigrants who built an empire on vice were outsiders. The musicians often felt that they had a better shot at success and protection by aligning their professional lives with the underworld rather than with the police and authorities of the straight world. Yet as nightclubs with names such as the Cotton Club and the Plantation indicate, there was plenty of racism, as well. Black musicians were often restricted to the stage, and the audience and management of the clubs were almost entirely White. English splits the narrative into two halves: In the first, the author focuses on Louis Armstrong; in the second, Frank Sinatra, both of whom had connections with organized crime throughout their careers. By the end of the century, both jazz and organized crime had changed, with the former declining in popularity and the latter in power. The civil rights and Black Power movements, as well as the progression of the music from the dance floor to the conservatory, contributed to the severing of a relationship that had allowed both to flourish through the eras of red-light districts, Prohibition, and corrupt city bosses. Much of this story has been told elsewhere, but English capably brings it back to life.
Despite few groundbreaking insights, this is entertaining, vivid cultural history.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-303141-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unexpectedly prescient cautionary tale.
A relatively obscure scandal from Eastern Prussia in the mid-1800s foreshadows several aspects of current sociopolitical polarization.
Königsberg was the professional home of Immanuel Kant, many bridges, and a stage of Napoleonic ambition and defeat. It was also, between 1835 and 1842, the setting of an uproar against two clergymen that escalated from the community square to the halls of government and heralded the division and defensiveness that dominate discourse almost two centuries later. Lutheran pastors Johann Ebel and Heinrich Diestel faced accusations that they were drawing followers into a religious sect marked by unorthodox scriptural interpretation, questionable metaphysical understanding, and debased sexual appetites. Historian Clark’s compact text accentuates the various factors that swelled four years of accusation of, investigation into, and response from Ebel and Diestel into such a scandal: outsized personalities and egos, particularities of Königsberg’s small and tight-knit community, class and gender divides that fueled affiliations and accusations. Military, political, and legal details of early 1800s Prussia may seem a historian’s indulgence, but the author curates them to emphasize the “atmosphere of incipient culture war” that spawns the drama of his subject. Protestant-Catholic tensions were heightened, post-Enlightenment rationalism and scientific discovery were squaring off with religious revelation, and the very institutions of religion, state, and family faced redefinition. Within this milieu, fear, skepticism, and the strict demands of belief systems redefined and realigned were weaponized with hyperbole and desperation, and each camp drew strict lines to guarantee clarity and uniformity. Clark does not panic or browbeat. Rather, his studied focus on the specificity of the scandal in Königsberg allows each reader to consider how cults of personality, sensational accusations, performative outrage, and unyielding beliefs might undermine or endanger not only individual livelihoods, but also the deeply human pursuits of spiritual fulfillment, community, and power.
An unexpectedly prescient cautionary tale.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9798217060948
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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