A raw and fascinating account of one mobster’s daily activities and career.
Veteran New York reporters tell the story of a Mafia kingpin’s rise to power, his decision to leave the mob and his role in testifying against his former partners in crime.
Leading Mafia authority Capeci (Wiseguys Say the Darndest Things: The Quotable Mafia, 2004, etc.) and former New York Daily News reporter Robbins (Investigative Reporting/CUNY School of Journalism) use hours of interviews with Al D’Arco to recount his progression toward becoming the Lucchese crime family’s acting boss in 1990. D’Arco grew up the son of an Italian immigrant in New York’s Little Italy during the 1940s, where the Mafia was like a “forest” surrounding him. With neighbors, friends and family in the “Life,” D’Arco assumed it was just a matter of time before he joined one of New York’s five families. After a short stint in the Army during the Korean War, D’Arco received mentorship from a cousin who was a made member of the Mafia, and he associated with a Lucchese family crew under the leadership of the notorious Paul Vario (featured in the book Wiseguys and the movie Goodfellas). Inheriting his father’s determined work ethic, D’Arco put his energy toward a successful career in the Mafia, including having his oldest son follow in his trade. D’Arco’s labors bore fruit when the Lucchese family’s boss and underboss were forced to go on the lam, making him the organization’s acting boss. As a boss, he attempted to reconcile his sense of honor with the crimes he was pushed to commit. When members of the crime family conspired to kill him, his personal code was tested further with his decision to turn to the FBI and testify against his former associates. While tension grows with D’Arco’s decision to leave the Life, the most interesting portions of the book follow the colorful cast of characters he encountered during his Mafia career.
A raw and fascinating account of one mobster’s daily activities and career.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00686-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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