Frank Mattich--the first in his family to graduate college, the first in his family to go to prison. How does an ordinary school teacher become a mafia style kingpin, dealing in drugs and running a gambling enterprise? "Steel Mill Mafia--The Pittsburgh Connection" explains how a man of common circumstance can turn down the wrong path and how a core of innate goodness can redeem him.
A local basketball star in a small Ohio town tries to remake his life in middle age, but instead must confront a murderer and the prospect of leaving his hometown and giving up everything that once gave his life meaning. Nicholas "Duke" Ducheski is the most important man in the eastern Ohio steel town of Mingo Junction. Nearly two decades after he made the winning shot in the state championship basketball game, he remains much adored and the focal point of community pride. Hardly a day passes when someone doesn't want to talk about "the game." Now approaching forty, Duke no longer wants to be defined solely by something he did when he was eighteen. So he decides to parlay his local popularity into a successful restaurant--"Duke's Place." But no sooner does he get his restaurant up and running than disaster strikes. One day, "Little Tony" DeMarco, his brother-in-law and a known mob enforcer, comes into the restaurant and murders Duke's oldest friend. Now Duke faces the hardest decision of his life. DeMarco thinks he's untouchable, but Duke discovers a way to take him down, along with his mob superiors. To do so, however, means leaving Mingo Junction and sacrificing his treasured identity as the town legend. And if he follows through, what will remain of his life?
Mountain Mafia is a brief history of the Black Hand and Mafia in the Rocky Mountain region. It brings to life some of the more colorful leaders in the West's organized crime operations throughout the 20th century, including Roma, Colletti, and the Smaldones. Especially examined is the famous court case of "Scotty" Spinuzzi, who was acquitted of murder "because no one saw the bullet leave the gun." Also mentioned is the connection these western mobsters had with notorious crime members in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Author
One of Newsweek's Most Highly Anticipated New Books of 2021 Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America. Best-selling author Russell Shorto, praised for his incisive works of narrative history, never thought to write about his own past. He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence. Then an elderly relative prodded: You’re a writer—what are you gonna do about the story? Smalltime is a mob story straight out of central casting—but with a difference, for the small-town mob, which stretched from Schenectady to Fresno, is a mostly unknown world. The location is the brawny postwar factory town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The setting is City Cigar, a storefront next to City Hall, behind which Russ and his brother-in-law, “Little Joe,” operate a gambling empire and effectively run the town. Smalltime is a riveting American immigrant story that travels back to Risorgimento Sicily, to the ancient, dusty, hill-town home of Antonino Sciotto, the author’s great-grandfather, who leaves his wife and children in grinding poverty for a new life—and wife—in a Pennsylvania mining town. It’s a tale of Italian Americans living in squalor and prejudice, and of the rise of Russ, who, like thousands of other young men, created a copy of the American establishment that excluded him. Smalltime draws an intimate portrait of a mobster and his wife, sudden riches, and the toll a lawless life takes on one family. But Smalltime is something more. The author enlists his ailing father—Tony, the mobster’s son—as his partner in the search for their troubled patriarch. As secrets are revealed and Tony’s health deteriorates, the book become an urgent and intimate exploration of three generations of the American immigrant experience. Moving, wryly funny, and richly detailed, Smalltime is an irresistible memoir by a masterful writer of historical narrative.
Tonino Valerii is one of Italy's best genre film directors. Starting out as Sergio Leone's assistant on For a Few Dollars More (1965), he went on to direct spaghetti westerns that stand out among the most accomplished in their class--Day of Anger (1967), The Price of Power (1969), A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die! (1972) and My Name Is Nobody (1973). He also directed the outstanding giallo My Dear Killer (1972). This book examines Valerii's life and career in depth for the first time, with exclusive interviews with the filmmaker, scriptwriters and actors, and critical analysis of his films.
Violent bank heists, bold train robberies and hardened gangs all tear across the history of the wild west--western Pennsylvania, that is. The region played reluctant host to the likes of the infamous Biddle Boys, who escaped Allegheny County Jail by romancing the warden's wife, and the Cooley Gang, which held Fayette County in its violent grip at the close of the nineteenth century. Then there was Pennsylvania's own Bonnie and Clyde--Irene and Glenn--whose murderous misadventures earned the "trigger blonde" and her beau the electric chair in 1931. From the perilous train tracks of Erie to the gritty streets of Pittsburgh, authors Thomas White and Michael Hassett trace the dark history of the crooks, murderers and outlaws who both terrorized and fascinated the citizenry of western Pennsylvania.
Does it pay to be good-hearted? Can a purpose-filled life win over a life anchored in corporate gluttony? When will the constant melee between the deserving and the greedy end? Nakul, a newly minted MBA, takes on a life replete with wealth and glamour when he joins PanAsia, an investment bank. Along with a dream lifestyle in the swankiest of Mumbai backdrops and an entourage of well-wishers to boot, he also inherits a series of unconventional challenges. Nakul's ordeals can best be dealt with if he makes a sincere effort to answer the very questions that form the essence of life.
Three Brothers Plus One is a fictional, historical, romantic and adventurous novel presented in TWO PARTS Part One—A baby girl (3-1/2 years old) was kidnapped by the Naples Italian Mafi a—1933 and brought to New York City and transported to a section in lower Manhattan called Little Italy. Seven members of a neighborhood street gang from Astoria, Queens coming home from seeing an Opera while walking through the Greenwich Village Park, discover this baby girl on a park bench. The balance of the adventure is about her growing up in America and the locating of the roots of this kidnapped baby girl. Part Two—After WW11 1945 Retired Colonel Alfred S. Habetrawongo had been requested by the U.S. State Department to look into the leading industry in Europe—The Counterfeiting of the U.S. American Dollars and Coins.
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES The electrifying, untold story of the women born into the most deadly and obscenely wealthy of the Italian mafias – and how they risked everything to bring it down. The Calabrian Mafia—known as the ’Ndrangheta—is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls seventy percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals—supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists—and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union. The ’Ndrangheta’s power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence—omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the ’Ndrangheta’s reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings—and worse—are routine. In 2009, after one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s sexism might be its greatest flaw—and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children. A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.
A young trainee anthropologist leaves her violent Mafia-run hometown—Youngstown, Ohio—to study an "exotic" group, the Paiute Indians of Nevada. This is 1964; she'll be "the expert," and they'll be "the subjects." The Paiute elders have other ideas. They'll be "the parents." They set themselves two tasks: to help her get a good grade on her project and to send her home quickly to her new bridegroom. They dismiss her research topic and introduce her instead to their spirit creature, the outrageously mischievous rule-breaking trickster, Coyote. Why do the Paiutes love Coyote? Why do Youngstown mill workers vote for Mafia candidates for municipal office? Tricksters become key to understanding how oppressed groups function in a hostile world. For more information visit www.trickster.ie.
