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THE MAFIA'S PRESIDENT

Name: THE MAFIA'S PRESIDENT
Author: Don Fulsom
ISBN: 978-1-250-11940-7

NIXON AND THE MOB

by Don Fulsom ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 14, 2017

A pulpy book that plays out historical conspiracy theory with a chilling specificity.

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Recounting Richard Nixon’s ties to mobsters, malfeasance, and, potentially, the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Former Washington United Press International bureau chief Fulsom (Treason: Nixon and the 1968 Election, 2015, etc.) has long been considering Nixon’s unsavory record: “The first inklings I had that Richard Nixon was somehow mixed up with the Mafia came during the 50 or so trips I made to cover the candidate, president-elect, and then president at his Key Biscayne, Florida, home.” The author argues that beyond the shameful Watergate break-in that ended his presidency, Nixon was long accustomed to shady dealings with dangerous, powerful figures, at odds with his public image of sour probity. He develops this most powerfully with regard to Nixon’s early years, noting how his political rise mirrored organized crime’s apex of covert power. He attributes this to Nixon’s cultivation of behind-the-curtain types such as his close friend Bebe Rebozo, “eventually looked up to by the nation’s top gangsters.” Nixon developed the habit of building a war chest of illicit donations, which allowed the mobsters to make connections that benefitted them hugely during his presidency, as federal law enforcement soft-pedaled their prosecutions. As vice president, Nixon delighted in overseeing covert operations, including plots against Fidel Castro. Fulsom digresses from his focus on Nixon to look at theories that the anti-Castro Mafia–CIA cabal engineered the assassination of JFK. Examining sources including the Nixon White House tapes and noting Nixon’s presence in Dallas on the fateful day, the author catalogs many unanswered questions about whether the conspiracy reached him, noting that afterward, “Nixon’s actions often contradicted his words when it came to discussing the Kennedy assassination.” Fulsom relies heavily on other sources, from the reputable to the marginal. He retells this narrative colorfully, but his depictions of people like Rebozo, Jack Ruby, and various mobsters and CIA agents become repetitive, and the book suffers from the lack of a fuller interpretive discussion of Nixon’s times and unique, if warped perspective.

A pulpy book that plays out historical conspiracy theory with a chilling specificity.

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-250-11940-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.