Powerful...Poignant...Inspiring As a child growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Gregory Marshall was enamored with the fast life. Money, women and cars were the things to have and Greg was determined to get them-by any means necessary. It wasn't long before the innocent youngster had turned into a cold-hearted gangster known around town simply as G Man. His ruthless life of crime made him a legend in South Central LA-and the go-to man for everyone from Tupac Shakur to the notorious Monster Kody. But a drug deal gone bad eventually left him shot and near death...forcing him into the ultimate struggle for survival. Faced with intense rehabilitation and paralyssis that had crippled the entire right side of his body, Greg had two choices, give up or get up. He chose the latter. And with the use of only one finger, he wrote his story through gritty, breathtaking, and sometimes brutal details...including his anger at injustices, the pain of abandonment and one unlikely act of kindness that started him on the path of healing and forgiveness.
“When Mom got out of jail, it was great having her home.” Mondo the Dwarf. Frankie Shots. Jospeh “Little Lolly Pop” Carna. Larry “Big Lolly Pop” Carna. Salvatore “Sally Boy” Marinelli. Johnny Tarzan. Louie Pizza. Sally D, Bobby B, Roy Roy, and Punchy. They were THE PRESIDENT STREET BOYS of Brooklyn, New York. Frank Dimatteo was born into a family of mob hitmen. His father and godfather were shooters and bodyguards for infamous Mafia legends, the Gallo brothers. His uncle was a capo in the Genovese crime family and bodyguard to Frank Costello. Needless to say, DiMatteo saw and heard things that a boy shouldn’t see or hear. He knew everybody in the neighborhood. And they knew him. . .and his family. And does he have some wild stories to tell. . . From the old-school Mafia dons and infamous “five families” who called all the shots, to the new-breed “independents” of the ballsy Gallo gang who didn’t answer to nobody, Dimatteo pulls no punches in describing what it’s really like growing up in the mob. Getting his cheeks pinched by Crazy Joe Gallo until tears came down his face. Dropping out of school and hanging gangster-style with the boys on President Street. Watching the Gallos wage an all-out war against wiseguys with more power, more money, more guns. And finally, revealing the shocking deathbed confessions that will blow the lid off the sordid deeds, stunning betrayals, and all-too-secret history of the American Mafia. Originally self-published as Lion in the Basement Raves For THE PRESIDENT STREET BOYS: Growing Up Mafia “Frankie D was born and raised in this life—and he’s still alive and still free. They don’t come any sharper then Frankie D. A real gangster story. Read this book!” —Nicky “Slick” DiPietro, New York City “I know Frankie D from when i was a kid living in South Brooklyn. It was hard reading about my father, Gennaro “Chitoz” Basciano, but I knew it was the truth. Frankie’s book is dead on the money—I couldn’t put it down.” —Eddie Basciano, somewhere in Florida “It’s been forty years since I’ve been with Frankie D doing our thing on President Street. This book was like a flashback, Frankie D nails it from beginning to the end. Bravo, from one of the President Street Boys.” —Anthony “Goombadiel” DeLuca, Brooklyn, New York “As a neighborhood kid I grew up around President Street and know firsthand the lure of ‘the life’ as a police officer and as a kid that escaped the lure. I can tell you the blind loyalty that the crews had for their bosses—unbounded, limitless, and dangerous. As the Prince of President Street, Frank Dimatteo, is representative of a lost generation of Italian Americans. If any of this crew had been given a fair shot at the beginning they would have been geniuses in their chosen field.” —Joseph "Giggy" Gagliardo, Retired DEA Agent, New York City “The President Street Boys takes me back as if it was a time machine. Its authenticity is compelling reading for those interested in what things were really like in those mob heydays; not some author’s formulation without an inkling of what was going on behind the scenes. I loved the book because I was there, and know for sure readers will love it too.” —Sonny Girard, author of Blood of Our Fathers and Sins of Our Sons
In the early 1960s, a bloody civil war broke out between the two powerful Irish Mob families in the Somerville Massachusetts neighborhood known as Winter Hill. More than 60 men were murdered. The events offer a true picture of an era in Boston's pre-Whitey Bulger history when the streets were protected by a close-knit group of Irish-Italian "businessmen."
A classic in contemporary Oklahoma literature, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Red Dirt unearths the joys and ordeals of growing up poor during the 1940s and 1950s. In this exquisite rendering of her childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era, the author bears witness to a family and community that still cling to the dream of America as a republic of landowners.
The children of notorious Mafia wiseguy and informant Henry Hill-the real-life subject of Goodfellas-tell their own story of danger, hurt, and family in this extraordinary account of growing up with an out-of-control father in the federal witness protection program. Henry Hill's business partner, Jimmy Burke, has whacked every person who could possibly implicate him in the infamous Lufthansa robbery at JFK airport. On his way to prison, lifelong gangster Henry is given two options: sleep with the fishes, or enter the FBI's Witness Protection Program. Unfortunately for his children Gregg and Gina, they're dragged along for the ride. Like nomads, they're forced to wander from state to state, constantly inventing new names and finding new friends, only to abandon them at a moment's notice. They live under constant fear of being found and killed. But Henry, the rock Gregg and Gina so desperately need, is a heavy cocaine user and knows only the criminal life. He is soon up to his old tricks and consistently putting their identities in jeopardy. And so it continues until the kids, now almost grown, can no longer ignore that the Mob might be less of a threat to them than remaining under the roof of their increasingly unbalanced father.
Photographer Lauren Greenfield capures often shocking, always startling images of children at school, at play, or at home in the precocious city of Los Angeles. The stunning color photographs range from the children of the gang culture of South Central and East L.A. to the affluent, often show-business world of the Westside. Underlying is the overwhelming importance of image and celebrity, with its materialistic trappings of fast cars and expensive clothes. 80 full-color photos.
The highly acclaimed novel that reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country. “A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.” —The New York Times Book Review In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.
A street thriller of kidnapping, murder, trickery, and love that will have you at the edge of your seat. After 7 years of prison, multi-millionaire drug mogul Kane Garrett is back on the streets. But instead of diving back into the drug game, he’s teaching a college class, infusing business principles with his signature ruthless edge he developed in the streets. When a student—and heavy heroin dealer—named Basil catches Kane’s eye, Kane takes him on as a protégé and together, they build the biggest, smartest drug trafficking business the state has ever seen. But when Basil meets Moriah, Kane’s only daughter, lines get crossed and their dominant business union becomes a deadly rivalry. Welcome to a world where the kings meet their end and no one stays at the top for long. The crown always lies heavy on he who commands the streets—and Kane and Basil will fight to claim their rule, before power is toppled again, in The Streets Have No King by New York Times bestselling author JaQuavis Coleman.
"This is the definitive story of Whitey Bulger…a masterwork of reporting." —Michael Connelly, best-selling author of The Wrong Side of Goodbye A New York Times Bestseller A #1 Boston Globe Bestseller An instant classic, this unforgettable narrative, rich with family ties and intrigue, follows the astonishing career of a gangster whose life was more sensational than fiction. Cullen and Murphy have broken more Bulger stories than anyone, and Whitey Bulger became front-page news, revealing the mobster's secret letters written from Plymouth Jail after the sixteen-year manhunt that led to his capture and offering unparalleled insight into his contradictions and complex personality. The afterword covering the results of the dramatic and emotional trial provides a riveting denouement to this "eminently fair and thorough telling of a life, which makes it all the more damning" (Boston Globe).
Memories of Growing Up in Little Italy, NYThis is a memoir of childhood friends growing up together in the 40's and 50'sin Little Italy NY. It tells the story of the culture of living in a poor neighborhoodwith Italian Immigrants.The old neighborhood, as it is still referred to by its past residents, was full oflife with Italians that immigrated from different areas of Italy bringing withthem all their different foods, cultures, superstitions and most of all theirdreams to raise their children to become good, honest and successful AmericanCitizens. Growing up in Little Italy was difficult, yet rewarding. We wereconsidered poor in terms of material wealth, but many of us grew up richer inmind, body and soul.Most of all we had our imaginations to dream up games that gave us somethingto do all day long. In our own way we were entrepreneurs, as we did anythingto make money like selling newspapers, shining shoes, running errands andmore. Looking back, the Good Times Were Rolling Along.
