Paced like a fine piece of fiction, this is a handsomely written chronicle of an interesting mob character.
A definitive rags-to-riches biography of Al Capone’s “Man in Hollywood,” Johnny Rosselli (1905-1976).
In his latest biography, Server (Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing", 2006, etc.) sorts through a massive amount of information—grand jury testimony, police records, news reports, hearsay—to create a cohesive, engaging narrative of the life of a gangster and the “Los Angeles underworld” in which he lived and worked. After enduring a childhood of poverty in Boston, Rosselli plunged into the criminal world in 1920s Los Angeles, at age 19, where he excelled as a bootleg driver. By 22, he was already running his own independent race book under his newly won moniker, Handsome Johnny. “His appearance evidenced good fortune and expensive tastes,” writes the author. “Gone were the old work clothes and boots, the stubbly face and dirty fingers, replaced with a fine wardrobe [and] immaculate grooming (movie-star haircut, treated skin, manicured nails with the luster of Red Sea pearls).” At only 23, together with Jack Dragna, Rosselli became Capone’s ambassador to the wide open frontier of Los Angeles. “It had happened quickly and efficiently,” writes Server. “And it was just the beginning.” From his tenure as a producer of major film noirs and hand in launching the career of Marilyn Monroe to his pioneering involvement in entrenching the Mafia in the new frontier of Las Vegas and 1960s entanglement with Sam Giancana in a CIA–backed plan to poison Cuban president Fidel Castro, Rosselli lived an unquestionably fascinating life, and the author ably captures it from one compelling exploit to the next. Server also examines Rosselli’s friendships with Frank Sinatra and other celebrities, his part in negotiating eccentric aviator Howard Hughes’ entry into the Las Vegas crime-scape, his alleged role in JFK’s assassination, and his grim end (his decomposing body was found in a fuel drum near Miami).
Paced like a fine piece of fiction, this is a handsomely written chronicle of an interesting mob character.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-56668-5
Page Count: 544
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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