Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Gentleman Gangster

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin by Lee Server

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Ever since I read Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine last year, I’ve been obsessed with SoCal mobster tales. Martin Scorsese came close to adapting Frankie Machine before he was seduced by Charles Brandt’s inferior I Heard You Paint Houses, which he turned into The Irishman. If Scorsese had wanted to do a lion-in-winter mafia tale, I wish he had done Frankie or a movie on Rosselli’s life. Both of which are more interesting than another northeastern gangster story. Lee Server is an expert on pop history, with bios of Ava Gardner and […]

Man of La Mafia

The Kiss Off by Jim Cirni

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The downside to having an abundance of READ THIS listicles on the internet is that sometimes, books slip through the cracks. Rarely do I go into a library or bookstore without knowing exactly what I’m looking for. Sure, in the pre-Covid era, I could spend hours browsing but when it came time to check out, I’d usually go with what I know I wanted. There was a time when my shelves were just stacked with books I know I would never read and I’m seriously […]

Famiglia

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab

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After reading Michael Cannell’s A Brotherhood Betrayed, I had an itch to scratch for mob books. I read a few others but all roads led to me finally tackling Selwyn Raab’s massive tome on New York’s famous five families. Let’s just say the itch has been scratched…raw. This is as good of a book as could reasonably be expected, considering its ambitious and unwieldy goal of writing a narrative about all five New York mafia families. Having read a lot of mob origin stories lately, I’m […]

BadFellas

Murder Machine by Gene Mustain & Jerry Capeci

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Kind of wonder what could have been if Martin Scorsese had gotten his hands on this book before Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy. This is Goodfellas, only if the murder montage was like half the movie. I knew the name Roy DeMeo and that he was the head of perhaps the most murderous crew in Mafia history but I didn’t know exactly what is story was or how it operated. On a bit of a mob kick, I finally picked this one up. It’s a brutal tale and both writers […]

Babylon Brooklyn

A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc. by Michael Cannell

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Look, I am very simple. I like mob books, especially but not limited to ones set in New York City. If you write a good mob tale, fiction or non-fiction, I’ll devour it and give you your credit. So that’s what I’m here to do with this one. I’ve been curious about the Abe Reles story ever since reading Kevin Baker’s flat, unoriginal The Big Crowd. His ghost seemed to loom over everything mob and politic related in New York for decades. The head of the mob’s […]



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