Enthusiasts likely already know the details of Basciano’s trials, and casual readers will be better served by other, clearer...
From organized crime specialist DeStefano (Mob Killer, 2011, etc.), a convoluted exploration of the career of Mafioso Vincent Basciano, who is currently serving a life sentence in a Supermax facility.
The author opens not with Basciano, but with a minor player in New York's Bonanno family who was executed for having a big mouth and a brash presence. His death is his connection to the story; it was ordered by none other than Basciano, who later admitted as much to his own boss in prison. The man was wearing a wire, so DeStefano is able to recount their conversation word-for-word, which makes for a dramatic, promising launch to his narrative. However, the author then muddies the waters by adding layer upon layer of mob history, obscuring Basciano’s trajectory. DeStefano gives so much background information about the Mafia in New York that the book becomes a jumble of names and crimes. Thrilling tales are glossed over, offering tantalizing glimpses of dramas that intrigue but take readers' minds off the purported subject. It's difficult to see how all these tidbits fit into Basciano’s story, if they belong there at all. Eventually, after nearly 200 pages, the narrative lands squarely back on Basciano, and the pace picks up with his arrest and multiple trials. DeStefano's prose is clearer in this section, cohesively describing the trials, legal strategies and lawyers, revealing previously unseen aspects of Basciano's character as he fought to avoid the death penalty. (Convicted of two separate murders in 2007 and 2011, he got off with life imprisonment in both cases.) Unfortunately, these insights come too late in the text and are not fully developed, so Basciano’s legacy in the world of organized crime remains unclear.
Enthusiasts likely already know the details of Basciano’s trials, and casual readers will be better served by other, clearer accounts.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7627-8541-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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