Life has never been dull for Billy and his dog Buddy, but ever since the circus arrived in the neighbourhood, it’s been getting better and better. There are crocodiles, ostriches, penguins, elephants... There’s little Vittorio and his pet chameleon... And of course, Caroline the tortoise and Buddy’s dog friends are still here. Oh, yes, quite the merry gang all right – and one who occasionally drives Billy’s parents mad!
Billy’s family is a perfectly normal one. Dad, Mom, some cousins, a tortoise... and of course the best dog in the world, Buddy! Oh, true, the cocker spaniel is too smart for everyone’s good sometimes, and occasionally triggers disasters or raids the fridge. But that’s a small price to pay for a loyal companion who’ll always be there to cheer you up and give you a good laugh!
In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a “confidential informant” made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kicking-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement. Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully “patched-in” member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After Queen spent twenty-eight months as “Billy St. John,” the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself. During his initial “prospecting” phase, Queen was at the mercy of crank-fueled criminal psychopaths who sought to have him test his mettle and prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling (and doing) drugs, to arms trafficking, stealing motorcycles, driving getaway cars, and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol “ol’ lady” after a particularly brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend. Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, for whom planning cop killings and gang rapes were business as usual, Queen also came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from family, his friends, and ATF colleagues, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. “I had no doubt these guys genuinely loved Billy St. John and would have laid down their lives for him. But they wouldn’t hesitate to murder Billy Queen.” From Queen’s first sleight of hand with a line of methamphetamine in front of him and a knife at his throat, to the fearsome face-off with their decades-old enemy, the Hell’s Angels (a brawl that left three bikers dead), to the heartbreaking scene of a father ostracized at Parents’ Night because his deranged-outlaw appearance precluded any interaction with regular citizens, Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenaline-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America and with the law enforcement agents who risk everything to bring them in.
Reading is a revolutionary act, an act of engagement in a culture that wants us to disengage. In The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin asks a number of timely questions - why is literature important? What does it offer, especially now? Blending commentary with memoir, Ulin addresses the importance of the simple act of reading in an increasingly digital culture. Reading a book, flipping through hard pages, or shuffling them on screen - it doesn't matter. The key is the act of reading, and it's seriousness and depth. Ulin emphasizes the importance of reflection and pause allowed by stopping to read a book, and the accompanying focus required to let the mind run free in a world that is not one's own. Are we willing to risk our collective interest in contemplation, nuanced thinking, and empathy? Far from preaching to the choir, The Lost Art of Reading is a call to arms, or rather, to pages.
A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Veteran sports journalist George Vecsey finally gives this twenty-time All-Star and St. Louis Cardinals icon the biographical treatment he deserves. Stan Musial is the definitive portrait of one of the game’s best-loved but most unappreciated legends—told through the remembrances of those who played beside, worked with, and covered “Stan the Man” over the course of his nearly seventy years in the national spotlight. Away from the diamond, Musial proved a savvy businessman and a model of humility and graciousness toward his many fans in St. Louis and around the world. From Keith Hernandez’s boyhood memories of Musial leaving tickets for him when the Cardinals were in San Francisco to the little-known story of Musial’s friendship with novelist James Michener, Vecsey weaves an intimate oral history around one of the great gentlemen of baseball’s Greatest Generation.
These legendary stories, from the classic first fifteen issues of Bagge's Hate comic, are a defining icon of Seattle's early 1990s culture, as well as Generation X in general. This is the first time these hilarious stories, starring the hapless Buddy Bradley and his cast of loser cohorts, have ever been available under one cover, and never have they been available at such a low price! Bagge's riotous tales of the early 1990s subculture are more hilarious now than ever, and find out why he has been praised by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, John Kricfalusi, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and many more as a comedy genius.
Police, the press, and the public all see the kind of violence that besets the inner city today as irrational and basically about turf, revenge, or drugs. Renowned criminologist and expert on gangs, John Hagedorn here tells a very different and little-known story centered on the dramatic rise and fall of a Mafia-like Latino organization in Chicago called "Spanish Growth & Development." Hagedorn's main informant is 'Sal Martino, ' an Italian Mafioso who became intimately involved with the "In$ane Family," one of the factions of Spanish Growth & Development. Through Sal's first-hand account, Hagedorn shows that the violence was not a result of "disorganized crime" but rather the outcome of SGD's prolonged demise. He gives us for the first time a detailed the history of SGD-the reasons for its creation, the uneasy alliances between gang families, the organization's reliance on bottom-up police corruption, and its ultimate collapse in a pool of blood at a 1999 "peace" conference. Revealing the hidden and riveting stories of Chicago gangs' efforts to build structures ostensibly to reduce violence and to organize crime, of the integration of gang and mafia history, and of the central role of police corruption in Chicago's gangland, "The In$ane Chicago Way" makes a powerful argument for the need to regard corruption as the bedrock of gang power. It dispels the notion that gang violence can be explained solely by ecological, neighborhood-based processes and sheds light on the current gang situation in Chicago by laying bare its history while raising disturbing questions for researchers, policy-makers, and the public.
