ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University.
He is the author of No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care and Short Stories from a Small Town. He is also the author of numerous non-fiction on the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and "Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."
His non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist, American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of 2008.
His play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
Mary and I bought a new puppy. We still have Bart the Dog of course, but he's ill and getting older and needs some company, which we're told will liven him up a bit. So the puppy (No name yet) arrives October 16.
Paddy walks into a bar in Dublin,
orders three pints of Guinness and sits in the back of the room, drinking a sip
out of each one in turn. When he finishes them, he comes back to the bar and
orders three more.
The bartender asks him, "You
know, a pint goes flat after I draw it; it would taste better if you bought one
at a time."
Paddy replies, "Well, you
see, I have two brothers. One is in America, the other in Australia, and I'm
here in Dublin. When we all left home, we promised that we'd drink this way to
remember the days when we drank together." The bartender admits that this
is a nice custom, and leaves it there.
Paddy becomes a regular in the
bar, and always drinks the same way: ordering three pints and drinking them in
turn. One day, he comes in and orders two pints. All the other regulars notice
and fall silent.
When he comes back to the bar for
the second round, the bartender says, "I don't want to intrude on your
grief, but I wanted to offer my condolences on your great loss." Paddy
looks confused for a moment, then a light dawns in his eye and he laughs.
"Oh, no," he says,
"Everyone's fine. I've just quit drinking!"
What love is……………….
True love stories never have
endings. ~Richard Bach
Beat
poetry evolved during the 1940s in both New York City and on the west coast,
although San Francisco became the heart of the movement in the early 1950s. The
end of World War II left poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso questioning mainstream politics and
culture. A Brief Guide to the Beat Poets | Academy of American Poets https://www.poets.org/poetsorg
MISH MOSH..........................................
Mish
Mash: noun \ˈmish-ˌmash, -ˌmäsh\ A :
hodgepodge, jumble “The painting was just a mishmash of colors and abstract shapes as
far as we could tell”. Origin Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse
masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps
reduplication of mishn to mix. First Known Use: 15th century
A girl with two graves: The past haunts a city that evicted its dead
Joseph Serna
They found her buried under a garage earlier this year, her small body perfectly preserved in an airless, metal casket.
She wore a white christening dress with hand-stitched lace that would have dragged along the ground when she walked. Her blond hair had been laced with sprigs of lavender and a rosary of eucalyptus seeds lay on her chest.
She is believed to have died around 1870, when pinewood coffins sold for $2. Her elaborate glass and cast-iron vessel would have cost 10 times that much.
We need to know this little girl’s name. Someone needs to say this girl’s name again.— Steven Sederwall, a retired LAPD detective
But neither the girl’s name nor details of her demise were anywhere to be found.
Her coffin was unearthed when construction workers broke through the concrete floor of a home under renovation in San Francisco’s Richmond district. The grim discovery this spring riveted the city, sparking an outpouring of posthumous grief and an intensive effort to identify her. How was it possible, people wondered, that a 3-year old who was so lovingly interred could be so thoroughly forgotten?
“We need to know this little girl’s name,” said Steven Sederwall, a retired Los Angeles police detective who is among those who have been moved by her sudden celebrity. “Someone needs to say this girl’s name again.”
Finding that out, however, has proved harder than anyone could imagine.
The clump of hair was plucked from the girl’s bangs carefully, but not professionally, and the follicles that Jelmer Eerkens hoped would be in abundance were scarce.
The follicle tissue can provide decent samples of nuclear DNA, which contains genetic information from both parents. To date, experts have only been able to sequence the girl’s mitochondrial DNA, which shows the genetic background of her mother.
But within those thin shafts of hair lies a trove of useful information, said Eerkens, an archeology professor at UC Davis.
“She has a pretty rare type of maternal ancestry,” he wrote in an email. “We don’t know a lot about it, but everyone living today, so far, who has this DNA signature is from the British Isles.”
The delicate locks also may provide clues as to how the mystery girl lived.
An analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in her hair showed that in the last two or three months of life, the girl endured dramatic weight loss consistent “with some type of drawn-out disease,” as opposed to a sudden accident or fast-killing virus like smallpox or measles, he said.
Further tests could reveal the region she grew up in and traces of heavy metals could offer clues to what medicines doctors used to treat her.
“As an archaeologist, I’m interested in things we can learn from the past,” Eerkens said. “These lives we live … it’s important we record these things.”
According to historians, when San Francisco was in its infancy, residents and businesses coalesced around San Francisco Bay. The dead were buried in what is now the financial district.
But then came the Gold Rush of 1849, which flooded the city with new residents, new illnesses and death. Bodies in the financial district were exhumed and relocated west, closer to the ocean, to make way for the mass migration.
By the late 1880s, there were dozens of cemeteries in San Francisco, and most were full. Officials and developers deemed the burial grounds as more valuable to the living, and launched a decades-long campaign to evict the dead.
City crews and cemetery workers hauled hundreds of thousands of corpses south to what is now Colma. Today the city has about 1,500 living residents and more than 1.5 million bodies underground, including such historic figures as Wyatt Earp and William Randolph Hearst.
But Sederwall, a self-described cowboy from Texas who spends his post-law enforcement career solving centuries-old homicide cases, doubts all of the dead ever made it to Colma.
His research has found that workers simply dug straight trenches through the cemeteries and pulled out whatever bodies they hit along the way without minding maps or blueprints of the grounds to locate them all.
During a massive retrofitting project for San Francisco’s Legion of Honor fine arts museum in 1993, the remains of more than 700 people were unearthed.
“What that tells me is you’ve got a playground that’s probably got children under it. Houses with bodies,” Sederwall said.
He believes the mystery girl was one of those left behind.
Less than 100 yards from where the girl in the casket was found, a headstone for another man from roughly the same era was discovered, Sederwall said.
As he and his staff would come to learn, the area where the headstone and casket were found used to be part of the Odd Fellows Cemetery.
“We have thought that there was a presence in the house. It didn’t really have any explanation for thinking we heard little footsteps,” said Ericka Karner, who with her husband and two daughters lived in the home where the girl was found. “I don’t know. I wasn’t necessarily spooked.”
Karner’s family has owned the home on Rossi Avenue since 1976. Growing up, the morbid history of the area was common knowledge, as was the possibility of unseen neighbors just below their feet.
“I had heard that during renovations that this does happen on occasion. But it’s not something as a homeowner you’re prepared to deal with,” Karner said.
She and the family were vacationing in Idaho when workers tearing out the garage floor to build a new living room happened upon the casket.
They sent her photos and contacted the San Francisco medical examiner, who came, unsealed the casket, verified it was a real body, then left without taking on the case because officials decided it had been properly, legally interred 140 or so years ago.
The medical examiner’s office did not return repeated requests for comment on this story.
“From a common sense standpoint, the city was the one that relocated bodies. They missed some. To many it seems like the city would still be responsible,” Karner said.
Unsealed and exposed to the elements, the body began to rapidly decay.
Suddenly, time was of the essence.
“For me, it always goes back to being a parent and I can’t imagine losing a child … it’s no different today than it was in the 1880s,” Karner said. “What was important for me was making sure the next steps were respectful to this individual …. The way she was buried and preserved – it’s an indication she was well-loved and cherished.”
Karner spoke with the city administrator’s office, which said it couldn’t help, but pointed her to Elissa Davey. The founder of the Garden of Innocence, an organization that buries abandoned and unidentified children, was just as adamant that the girl receive a proper burial as Karner was.
Davey tapped her network of genealogists and grave hunters to join the effort.
An email in late June from a member of the network in Billings, Mont., explained why so many bodies were missed during the mass transport of graves to Colma a century ago.
“Bulldozers weren’t involved in the removal process,” he wrote. “The surface land was stripped bare at least seven years before actual digging began. The removal contractors placed string lines in an east-west orientation, spaced where experience told them the most graves would be intersected. Experts moved along those string lines, probing with hardened brass rods at set intervals. They could literally predict by feel and experience whether there was a casket, a collapsed grave, ashes or no grave at all below. Workers dug only where they marked and as deep as they marked. Everything was done by hand.”
Using a cemetery map from 1900 and the headstone found near Karner’s home as sign posts, the group concluded that the girl was likely buried in the Cosmopolitan section of the Odd Fellows Cemetery — though there’s no way to know for sure.
Thousands of burial records have turned up dozens of candidates for the girl’s identity, but they eventually lead to dead ends. A relative of one of the candidates will have her DNA tested to see if it matches the girl in the casket, but no one is optimistic.
Davey and her team identified another family that appeared to have been buried in that area of the cemetery and the name of a girl who would have been buried and then removed in the 1870s.
But without more specific records or maps from that era, there’s no way to know for sure if the names and locations correspond to where the casket was found.
“So it’s become a quest, a mission,” Davey said. “We need to know who she is … so she can be complete.”
Nine people, including Sederwall in Arizona, a man in Seattle, a librarian in Ohio and an anthropologist in Berkeley, are involved in the hunt, Davey said.
Four psychics have called her and said they knew the girl’s name. All four were different.
“I have a whole file,” Davey said. “One called and said ‘She whispered in my ear her name was Victoria, that she had a really high fever and she just faded away.’”
Amid the endless searching, the girl’s decomposition accelerated because the casket was unsealed. In the end, Davey’s and Karner’s two young daughters decided to give the mystery girl a name, if for no other reason than to give her a proper burial.
On a gray Saturday morning, weeks after the casket was discovered, dozens of Bay Area residents, members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Davey’s colleagues gathered at Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma.
“She shouldn’t be forgotten a second time,” said Jennifer Haug, 49, a San Bruno resident who attended the service.
The group watched in silence as a new cherry wood coffin with the original casket enclosed within was lowered into the ground before a large, heart-shaped headstone made of granite.
One side of the monument had been etched with the name Miranda Eve and the partial epitaph, “If no one grieves, no one will remember.”
The other side of the headstone bears no words however.
It was kept smooth and ready for engraving. Just in case the mystery girl’s true identity is ever discovered.
THE ART
AND BEAUTY OF BALLET
MUSIC FOR THE SOUL
Roy Hargrove, Lionel Hampton, David Sanchez and Joe Lovano, photo by Frank Jackson
AND NOW, A BEATLES BREAK
TODAY'S ALLEGED MOB GUY
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
DON'T YOU JUST LOVE POP ART?
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU
TO ENJOY................
The Yellow Slicker
By
Stuart
Dischell
On this fourth day in a row of rain
There is a sameness to the streets broken only by the odd
Brightly painted house—the way those who pass by
In tan or black trench coats look back at the girl
Wearing a yellow slicker. The yellow slicker,
A gift from her aunt who knew London would be wet,
Having lived there herself just after The War,
The Europe she had known transformed to a state
Of the mind, no longer Central but Eastern, far away,
Bombed-out, depopulated, at least of her kind.
But for a girl of nineteen with American thoughts,
Traveler’s cheques, a boy at home, a university
Address, the decline of the West compels less
Than each step she takes through the London rain.
Even these British so accustomed to their weather
Admire the girl in the yellow slicker, as if she
With her uncovered streaming blond hair might shine
As the only sun they will see all wee. Now,
That’s the kind of history she likes to hear.
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS
EDITORS..........
THE ART OF WAR............
Photographs I’ve taken
We were
walking around Manhattan one day last year and came across the home/office (Now
a soup kitchen for the poor) of Dorothy Day, the Catholic social activist. The
staff was kind enough to let me in and take some photos.
Here’s an
article about her form Wikipedia.
Dorothy
Day, Obl.S.B., (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was a journalist, social
activist, and Catholic convert.
Dorothy Day
became famous after her conversion. She initially lived abohemian lifestyle
before becoming Catholic. This conversion is described in her autobiography,
The Long Loneliness.
Day's
social activism is also described in her autobiography. In 1917 she was
imprisoned as a member of suffragist Alice Paul's nonviolent Silent Sentinels.
In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish
the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that combines direct aid for
the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. She
practiced civil disobedience, which led to additional arrests in 1955, 1957, and
in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.
Day was
also an active journalist, and described her social activism in her writings.
As part of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day co-founded theCatholic Worker
newspaper in 1933, and served as its editor from 1933 until her death in 1980.
In this newspaper, Day advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism,
which she considered a third way between capitalism and socialism. Her activism
and writing gave her a national reputation as apolitical radical, perhaps the
most famous radical in American Catholic Church history.
AND HERE'S SOME ANIMALS FOR
YOU...................
The Observation and
Appreciation of Architecture
Earth Sermon - Beauty, Love And
Peace" 1971
“The use of color in my paintings
is of paramount importance to me. Through color I have sought to concentrate on
beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man."~Alma Thomas
Look at the size of this butterfly! Mt God, they grow big stuff here in West Virginia. I'm amazed every time I go out in my yard, I find something new.
Ever hear of the Holly Grey Line? Its a lot like Black listings
Screenwriter,
91, accuses Academy Awards of discriminating against him for being 'old and
white'
David Lawler, WASHINGTON
The effort to diversify the
Academy of Motion Pictures has encountered an obstacle in the form of a
91-year-old screenwriter who says he is being discriminated against because he
is "old and white".
Robert Bassing, a member of the
Academy since 1958, received a letter saying that his voting privileges for the
Oscars may be revoked.
Lorenza Munoz, the Academy's
managing director of membership and awards, wrote in the letter that the
potential change was due to his lack of recent activity.
But Mr Bassing responded by
saying the Academy is "trying to reduce the number of old white men so
they can meet their numbers". The row follows last year's uproar over the
lack of racial diversity among Oscar-winners.
Scoffing at Ms Munoz's suggestion
that he might be able to become an emeritus Academy member - which would allow
him to view film screenings but not vote - Mr Bassing told Hollywood Reporter
the offer was like saying "we're going to put you in a very nice cattle
car."
He has threatened to sue the Academy
if his voting privileges are taken away. “There’s a lot of old people in the
Academy that have very little left in their lives,” he told CBS Los Angeles.
“The one thing they have is that they can go to the academy, they can evaluate
films and they can cast their vote. To have that taken away, I think is cruel.”
It is unclear how many members
have been advised that they may lose their votes, but the move has ruffled some
feathers in Hollywood.
"It's a thinly veiled ploy
to kick out older white contributors, the backbone of the industry,"
according to Tab Hunter, the 85-year-old actor who starred in Battle Cry and
That Kind of Woman among other films.
The Academy was severely
criticised earlier this year when, for the second year in a row, all 20
nominees for the four major acting awards were white.
The "Oscars so white"
controversy loomed over the 2016 Academy Awards, with the likes of Will Smith,
Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee boycotting the show.
The Academy pledged sweeping
reforms to bring more minorities into the fold, one of which was diversifying
the group which votes for the awards.
Mr Bassing resents the idea that
removing him would help rectify the situation.
"The old white men my age,
we are the people who fought for civil rights," he told Fox Los Angeles.
"That was that generation. We were the people fighting for civil rights
and diversity long before these people ever heard of it."
He added: “Don’t throw the
members under the bus, or put the old people out to pasture."
The Academy responded to Mr
Bassing with a statement saying that it was "proud to lead the change we
must see across the industry", adding that its membership "represents
filmmakers and artists ranging in age from 24 to 91".
Two views of the Potomac River
I took a ride recently down to the tidewater area of Virginia and noticed the enormous differences in the Potomac, the same river that runs through Washington DC. In the first photo below you see the river where I live in West Virginia. Up here its generally slow moving and shallow. The other two photos are taken 80 miles east near Fredericksburg Va. where the river is very wide and somewhat deep.
Meanwhile, at the Shepherdstown West Virginia Farmer Market
7 LIFE-CHANGING LESSONS WE LEARN
FROM MOTHER TERESA
by Cheri Peacock
BY CHERI PEACOCK, FAITHCOUNTS.COM
CONTRIBUTOR
“We ourselves feel that what we
are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of
that missing drop.”
Mother Teresa was a woman of
intense faith who fervently believed the world could be a better place, drop by
drop, person by person. She dedicated her life to succoring and empowering the
disenfranchised, and taught us, through her actions, to cultivate and live an
attitude of faith.
MAKE OTHER PEOPLE HAPPY
“Spread love everywhere you go.
Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”
Poverty, taught Mother Teresa, is
not exclusive to being hungry or homeless; it includes feeling unwanted,
uncared for, and unloved. Much of the world spends a great amount of time
concerned with themselves—even Time magazine labeled millennials as the “Me Me
Me” generation. Have the faith to care more for other people—to truly look
outward.
BE FAITHFUL IN SMALL THINGS
“Be faithful in small things
because it is in them that your strength lies.”
Growing up, the phrase “faith can
move mountains” was often heard at home and church. While that is motivating, I
have discovered that mountains are sometimes moved piece by piece, rather than
as a whole. Perhaps my mountain is moved by lifting one shovelful of dirt over
and over and over again. Having faith to do the BIG things is important but
it’s as necessary to be faithful in small things, those little scoops of dirt.
One day, you’ll look and see how far you’ve come and how much stronger you are
because of those mounds you’ve been moving.
BUILD IT ANYWAY
“What you spend years building
may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway.”
Looking at my life, I have, more
than once, been paralyzed by fear—whether it be with career choices,
relationship or other big decisions. The fear that it might not work out. When
seeds of doubt enter the mind, a choice must be made—whether to fight the
battle or give in to doubt. Mother Teresa teaches a poignant lesson—it might be
destroyed in the end, but the lessons you learn building it will not. Build it
anyway.
GO HOME AND LOVE YOUR FAMILY
“What can you do to promote world
peace? Go home and love your family.”
We aren’t in this journey of life
alone. Family members and friends are there to support us, and lift us up. Have
faith in them. Don’t rely on your own strength. We need each other.
BE THE LEADER
“Do not wait for leaders; do it
alone, person to person.”
Be courageous and reach out of
your comfort zone. Don’t wait for the “right time” or for someone else to take
charge. You don’t need someone to tell you they need help; just go forward with
faith that you can and will change lives through small means and simple acts of
kindness, person to person.
FAITHFUL IS SUCCESSFUL
“God had not called me to be
successful. He has called me to be faithful.”
Wealth, fame, a big house,
designer clothes. To the world, this could seem like evidence of a successful
life. But, success doesn’t make you who you are. What do you do when the trial
mounts and the road is steep? Be faithful in the highs and lows of life.
FAITH IN ACTION
“Faith in action is love—and love
in action is service.”
Faith is more than a belief—it’s
an action. As we actively develop our faith, we will feel greater love for
others. That love leads to service. Take a look at your life. Are you showing
love in action?
There are many examples of
faithful people throughout history. As we look to them and learn from them, we
can live a more fulfilling life.
Cheri Peacock is a graduate of
SUU and hiking fanatic. Email her at cheripeacock@gmail.com.
Where in the World to Eat
Conde
Nast Traveler
Where in
the World to Eat
September
20, 2016
Courtesy Alden & Harlow
Two hundred and seven of the
greatest restaurants around the globe, according to those who eat, cook, and
travel for a living.
There’s no shortage of
food-focused Instagram feeds that will direct you to the tastiest avocado toast
in cities like Paris, London, New York, L.A.—hell, even Charleston. But when
you’re faced with the make-or-break travel dilemma of where to eat in Hong
Kong, Mendoza, Dakar—destinations where trustworthy recommendations are harder
to come by but all the more vital—you have one shot to get it right. (Who knows
when you’ll be back in Chengdu...) That’s why we enlisted and cross-referenced
the impassioned guidance from the real experts, our network of chefs, food
writers, and most-in-the-know travelers. What follows is a print-it-out,
laminate-it, take-a-screenshot-of-it, globe-spanning hit list so you will never
waste a meal again.
AUSTRIA
Gut Purbach, Purbach
“This elegant country inn in
eastern Austria, close to the Hungarian border, specializes in Austrian game
dishes like sandpiper and red-legged partridge.” Georges Desrues, food writer
CROATIA
Toklarija, Sovinjsko Polje
“The most memorable dish is in
the hills of Istria: a tangle of homemadetagliolini piled high with a bounty of
truffles shaved tableside.” Fiorella Valdesolo, editor in chief of Gather
Journal
DENMARK
Kadeau, Bornholm
“Precise and delicious cooking in
one of the most beautiful locations on the planet.” Matt Duckor, senior editor
at Epicurious
Amass, Copenhagen
“One simply cannot live without
Matt Orlando’s fermented potato bread.”Seen Lippert, former Chez Panisse chef
and world traveler
Manfreds, Copenhagen
“The kind of place you can while
away an afternoon, drinking natural and biodynamic wines paired with edible
haiku like spring onions with pistachio cream and elderflower.” Bill Addison,
restaurant editor at Eater.com
Noma, Copenhagen
“Name a restaurant trend of the
past ten years and it is likely to have originated from the mad mind of chef
René Redzepi. There are plenty of imitators, but there’s only one master.”
David Prior, contributing editor
Relæ, Copenhagen
“Any restaurant that opens these
days promising affordable tasting menus and creative cooking probably owes chef
Christian Puglisi a great debt. Six years in, and now overseen by executive
chef Jonathan Tam, Relæ remains one of the most influential and thoughtful in
the world.”Gabe Ulla, food writer
ENGLAND
Market Bistro, King’s Lynn
“This place is a
revelation—unpretentiously locavore-ish, welcoming, and personal. The
house-made breads are brilliant.” Kate Sekules, food and travel expert
The Clove Club, London
“This is where young British
chefs take aspects of gourmet pub fare and good local ingredients and bring
them to a whole new innovative level. I had super-tender fried chicken with
pine salt that was excellent.”Dominique Ansel, baker
Gymkhana, London
“The city’s most ambitious and
luxurious Indian restaurant, right in the heart of elegant Mayfair.” Peter Jon
Lindberg, contributing editor
Kitchen Table, London
“James Knappett harvests his own
samphire from the Cornish coast, collects verbena from his mom’s backyard in
Cambridgeshire, and makes biscuits with pine. He’s a freaking savant.” Peter
Jon Lindberg
Kitty Fisher’s, London
“A devilishly cozy restaurant
hidden away in Shepherd Market, with wood-paneled walls, dusty-pink velvet
banquettes, and raffish, informal service. The aged Galician beef is a must.”
Skye McAlpine, food writer andInstagrammer
The Ledbury, London
“Sophisticated tweezer food
that’s never cloying, just exactly precious enough.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Lyle’s, London
“Chef James Lowe’s food—like his
springy salad of pea shoots, podded peas, and Ticklemore cheese—represents an
evolution of British cuisine from sturdy nose-to-tail cooking to an elegant
celebration of the delicacy of the English seasons.” David Prior
Lyle's represents an "elegant celebration
of the delicacy of the English seasons."
Nopi, London
“Amazing and surprising use of
Mediterranean herbs. Sit at the communal table downstairs, right by the kitchen
pass, with a view of all the action.” Steve Wilson, co-founder/CEO of the 21c
Museum Hotels
Ognisko, London
“Like being invited to the most
fabulous dinner party. I love the blini with herring, the goose confit, smoked
eel salad, golonka, and steak tartare.”Kate Sekules
The Quality Chop House, London
“Warm, unpretentious, and just
plain delicious—with food and wine to match.” Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square
Hospitality Group and founder of Shake Shack
The River Café, London
“Quite possibly my favorite
Italian restaurant in the world.” Danny Meyer
Rochelle Canteen, London
“Everything works for me inside
the walls of Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold’s art-world lunch spot.”
Andrew Tarlow, owner of Wythe Hotel, Diner, and Marlow & Sons in New York
City
Spring, London
“By far the prettiest dining room
in London—and the food is exquisite.”Skye McAlpine
St. John, London
“Buttery Eccles cakes with
Lancashire cheese, meat pies, and tongue with pickled walnuts—all cooked to
perfection. You’ll wonder how Britain ever came to suffer from a poor culinary
reputation.” Skye McAlpine
FRANCE
La Ferme de la Ruchotte,
Bligny-sur-Ouche
“Frédéric Menager trained in some
of Paris’s best kitchens before turning his hand to rearing poultry. Every
weekend he cooks lunch beneath his family home, serving the best local produce
from the area.” James Henry, chef at Belon in Hong Kong
Brasserie Georges Lyon
“An Art Deco jewel serving
traditional local cuisine like tablier de sapeur,or pan-fried tripe, and
wonderfully fresh seafood. It’s also one of the few brasseries to brew its own
beer.” Georges Desrues
Paul Bocuse, Lyon
“Everything on the menu is
classic and delicious. Eat it all, if you can.”Frank Castronovo and Frank
Falcinelli, chefs/co-owners of Frankies Spuntino andPrime Meats in New York
City
Restaurant Chez Michel, Marseille
“The best bouillabaisse I’ve ever
had in my life.” Daniel Humm, chef and co-owner of Eleven Madison Park and The
NoMad in New York City
Le Bistrot du Paradou, Paradou
“Stone floors and walls, family
tables, pastis, and beautifully executed recipes that Grandmother would have
cooked. Go for Friday lunch.” Libby Travers, food writer
42: The number of countries our
sources nominated restaurants in.
Au Vieux Comptoir, Paris
“It would be a shame to miss the
magret de canard, but you can never go wrong with the specials. I plan layovers
in Paris just so I can devour their mind-bending sweetbreads.” Dawn Hagin,
chief inspiration officer at Lark Hotels
Chez L’Ami Jean, Paris
“Still a top contender for best
traditional bistro in town, albeit more Basque-inflected than your typical
place.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Clamato, Paris
“I go for a glass of wine and
wonderful-quality oysters. It reminds me of how the city was when I first lived
there.” Alice Waters of Chez Panisse
Clown Bar, Paris “Where you’ll
find all the best chefs on a Sunday night after their own restaurants close.
There’s insanely good offal dishes and a natural-wine list.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Frenchie, Paris
“I usually secure a reservation
before our flights are even booked. Chef Grégory Marchand’s technique blows me
away.” Ford Fry, chef/owner of The Optimist, BeetleCat, and others in Atlanta
L’Ambroisie, Paris
“Everything here is special, from
the gorgeous 18th-century decor to the chocolate tart, which is the absolute
best.” Daniel Humm
L’Arpège, Paris
“Chef Alain Passard is a
vegetable virtuoso.” Tim Ryan, president of The Culinary Institute of America
L’Astrance, Paris
“The most balanced and joyfully
bright tasting menu. Always inspired and perfectly executed.” Seen Lippert
Le Baratin, Paris
“The lovely veal brains with
lemon butter sauce, chives, and soft baby potatoes are simple and perfect.”
Dominique Ansel
Le Chateaubriand, Paris
“The tasting menu is executed at
just the right rhythm, and the wine pairings are phenomenal. Call exactly three
weeks ahead for a reservation.” Deana Saukam, food writer
Le Comptoir du Relais, Paris
“It’s always crowded. Go for
lunch and order the oeufs mayonnaise, terrine of pâté, and whatever seems
seasonal.” Mitchell Davis, executive vice president of the James Beard
Foundation
Le Servan, Paris
“The super-talented Levha sisters
have updated the classic bistro.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Miznon, Paris
“Probably the best lunch spot in
Paris. Get the whole roasted head of cauliflower, legendary in the inner
circles of Paris.” Ken Oringer, chef/co-owner of Uni, Toro, and Coppa in Boston
Septime, Paris
“Thoughtful food that lets the
produce tell its story, alongside a delightful wine list and an ambience that
feels like home.” Libby Travers
Le Club 55, Ramatuelle
“This place near St-Tropez has
some of the best beachfront dining anywhere. Crudités with anchovy dipping
sauce and whole grilled fish are my go-tos.” Ken Oringer
GERMANY
Shiso Burger, Berlin
“I’d fly back for the bulgogi
cheeseburger alone.” Sarah Khan, food and travel writer
ITALY
Ristorante da Cesare, Albaretto
della Torre
“I have fever dreams about
Giaccone’s local wild mushroom and peach salad.” Fiorella Valdesolo
Ristorante Battaglino, Bra
“A traditional Piedmontese
restaurant with dishes like the mythicalfinanziera, a stew of offal and cock’s
crests.” Georges Desrues
Buca dell’Orafo, Florence
“I long for the tortino, a simple
omelet made with artichokes or porcini, depending on the season. It’s so
delicious it defies science.” Mitchell Davis
Lo Scoglio, Marina del Cantone
“You could try to reproduce the
three-ingredient zucchini-garlic spaghetti. But even with the addition of the
secret ingredient—a bit of starchy pasta water, which gives it an ineffable
creaminess—the whole experience is the very definition of gestalt.” Pilar
Guzmán, editor in chief
L’Alchimista on the Piazza,
Montefalco
“This is Umbria on a plate.
Rabbit worth crossing the globe for.” Julie Gibbs, cookbook publisher
Cesare al Casaletto, Rome
“Thoughtfully rendered classics
like cacio e pepe and pasta alla gricia, and so many dishes that have virtually
vanished from Roman menus: skate and romanesco soup, brisket meatballs, and
roasted liver.” Katie Parla, co-author of Tasting Rome
Trust us, Da Laura in San
Fruttuoso, Italy is worth the trek. It’s likely that the food would taste just
as incredible even if you didn’t have to hike over a mountain or take a ferry
to get there. But the simple food is worth crawling here for: fat sheets of
fresh pasta napped in Ligurian pesto; spaghetti with chopped mussels; grilled
fish filleted tableside. All enjoyed with bottles of house wine, of course.
—Christine Muhlke, editor at large for Bon Appétit
Roscioli, Rome
“If you love French wine and
Italian food like we do, you’re in the right place.” Frank Castronovo and Frank
Falcinelli
Dal Pescatore, Runate
“The cooking emphasizes
excellence and comfort over gimmicks: chestnut gnocchi with bottarga, saffron
risotto in a pool of aged balsamico,and grilled eel from the Po River.” Alan
Sytsma, food editor of NYMag.com/Grub Street
Ardigna, Sicily
“Deep in the Trapani hills,
you’ll find a never-ending parade of old-school Sicilian hits prepared by
Italian grandmothers— literally.” Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli
Da Vittorio, Sicily
“The spaghetti with sea urchin is
the best in the world.” Deana Saukam
Viri Ku Cè, Sicily
“Seafood served straight from the
boat—raw, marinated, fried, grilled. There’s no menu, they just bring you
whatever is fresh that day until you tell them to stop.” Deana Saukam
Da Celeste, Venice “A family-run
restaurant on one of Venice’s fishing islands. You sit out on the pier, with
lagoon views and not a soul in sight. The whole oven-baked turbot is
exquisite.” Skye McAlpine
THE NETHERLANDS
Rijks, Amsterdam
“Great people, stunning food and
concept—I go here to be inspired.”Margot Janse, executive chef of Le Quartier
Français in Franschhoek, South Africa
NORWAY
Maaemo, Oslo
“Chef Esben Holmboe Bang may be
Danish, but he’s redefining Norwegian cuisine at this innovative eight-table
spot by turning ingredients like salted mutton and pine butter into craveable
tasting menu staples.” Matt Duckor
PORTUGAL
Zé Bota, Porto
“Big multi-ingredient platters
blend the flavors of sea and land. Standouts include the veal in Madeira sauce,
the miraculous cod, and the leite cremefor dessert.” Dawn Hagin
RUSSIA
White Rabbit, Moscow
“Vladimir Mukhin gives a
futuristic twist to obsessively researched 16th-century Russian recipes and
archaic Slavic ingredients most Russians know only from fairy tales. Get the
Forward to the Past tasting menu, which might include moose milk or the caviar
of an albino sturgeon.”Anya von Bremzen, food critic and memoirist
SPAIN
Asador Etxebarri, Apatamonasterio
“There’s a considered approach to
every dish—house-salted, house-churned, house-made—and then there’s that ice
cream. Incredible.” Libby Travers
La Paradeta, Barcelona
“Queue outside until they let you
in, choose the raw seafood and the way you want it cooked, then pay and collect
it from the kitchen. Super-simple, canteen-style." Margot Janse
Paco Meralgo, Barcelona
“A breezy tapas bar doing the
classics right. Order cuttlefish fritters, grilled fish, Iberian sausage, and
lots of wine.” Matt Rodbard, food editor/writer
4 to 6 months: That’s how far in
advance you should book a table atAsador Etxebarri, in Apatamonasterio, Spain—the
most recommended restaurant in the world, according to our experts.
Quimet & Quimet, Barcelona
“An always-packed, always-fun
wine bar where everything comes out of a can or a jar, conservas-style.” Ken
Oringer
Elkano, Getaria
“Most of the seafood is prepared
on a large outdoor grill, which you can smell as you approach the restaurant.”
Daniel Kessler, co-owner of Bergen Hillin New York City
Ca Na Toneta, Mallorca
“The owners source everything
from the island, even some of the clay for the plates.” Andrew Tarlow
Rafa’s, Roses
“The sweetest percebes (goose
barnacles), briny house-cured anchovies, and John Dory on the bone almost
brought tears to my eyes.” Luke Burgess former chef at Garagistes in Hobart,
Australia
SWEDEN
Fäviken, Järpen
“The breakfast is outrageously
good: porridge served with cloudberry compote, fresh whey cheese, and black
currant juice.” Matt Duckor
Ekstedt, Stockholm
“Niklas Ekstedt took all the
electricity out of the kitchen and cooks purely with live fire.” Peter Jon
Lindberg
Matbaren, Stockholm
“The beauty, tradition, and
craftsmanship of Scandinavian food. The best seat is at the bar.” Marcus
Samuelsson, chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author
SWITZERLAND
Kronenhalle, Zurich
“The food is delicious, the
champagne and wine list extensive, and it has a museum-quality collection of
art from the likes of Miró, Chagall, Picasso, and Matisse.” Daniel Humm
TURKEY
Kantin, Istanbul
“Chef Semsa Denizsel’s Black Sea
anchovies with spiced rice alone are worth the trip.” Katie Parla
UNITED STATES
CALIFORNIA
Chez Panisse, Berkeley
“The cradle of the American food
revolution continues to be as relevant as it was when its now legendary chef,
Alice Waters, co-founded it in 1971.”David Prior
Glen Ellen Star, Glen Ellen
“Chef Ari Weiswasser seems to
work the line every single night. The roasted baby carrots with harissa and crispy
chickpeas, served in a cast-iron skillet, was a standout. The menu is simple,
so the ingredients really shine. Sit at the bar for a direct view of the
kitchen and brick oven.” Rob Blood, founder and CEO of Lark Hotels
Animal, Los Angeles
“The room is nothing special, and
the service is almost comically casual ('Let me tell you about the pig’s ears,
bro'). But the food is way more ambitious and refined than the setting implies.
And for all the talk about pig’s ears, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s secret weapon
is their amazing produce, which is so very Los Angeles.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Chi Spacca, Los Angeles
“Large-format meats (like a
48-ounce bistecca fiorentina) roasted or grilled over fire. Simple and
perfect.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Guisados, Los Angeles
“Freshly pressed tortillas and
stewed meat make this L.A.'s best taco spot.” Matt Rodbard
Sqirl, Los Angeles
“Believe the hype. I’m happy to
wait in line to get my hands on my favorite Sqirl triumvirate: sorrel pesto
rice bowl, brioche toast with ricotta and Blenheim apricot jam, with a turmeric
tonic.” Fiorella Valdesolo
“I find the cooking here incredibly seductive.
I love its integrity, its bold, thoughtful flavors, and its ethos, plus the
wood-fired oven and communal tables.” Skye Gyngell, chef at Spring in London
Bar Tartine, San Francisco
“Cortney Burns and Nick Balla
make every ingredient in every dish at Bar Tartine; nothing leaves their
kitchen that wasn't grown or made by hand, in-house. You can taste that
next-level care in every bite: like the mind-blowing dry-aged beef tartare with
radish on house-sprouted bread.”Michael Solomonov, chef/co-owner of Zahav and
Dizengoff in Philadelphia
Benu, San Francisco
“Corey Lee's menu commands
attention, from some sort of voodoo with an unlaid hen's egg that pops you in
the kisser as a sweet hit of cholesterol, to a handwoven nori net that has
ensnared a collection of miniature pickled vegetables.” Myffy Rigby, editor of
Fairfax Media’s Good Food Guides
Saison, San Francisco
“While chef Joshua Skenes’s food
is beautiful, it is also intriguing. I recall wondering what type of vinegar
was used in a dish, expecting wine. It turned out to be fermented sea cucumber
guts. Doesn’t sound great, but it was so subtle and delicious.” Mitchell Davis
Swan Oyster Depot, San Francisco
“My happiest place in America to
eat crab backs filled with fat, juicy oysters and enjoy a cold draft beer.”
Anthony Bourdain, chef, writer, and TV personality
Zuni Café, San Francisco
“One of the most beautiful spaces
ever, with the most delicious food—especially if you go there straight from the
airport.” Ignacio Mattos, chef/co-owner of Estela and Café Altro Paradiso in
New York City
Gjelina, Venice
“I was so taken by my first visit
to Gjelina that I went back twice more in the same week. The best seat in the
house is a round table just inside the courtyard, giving a unique vantage point
on happenings both inside and out.” Steve Wilson
Gjelina is the kind of place you'll visit
twice in the same week.
Gjusta, Venice
“Travis Lett’s team understands
how people will want to eat in the future. Their original restaurant, Gjelina,
is an L.A. classic, but its upstart younger sibling, a café/bakery cum deli
counter in a sprawling Venice warehouse, channels a certain brand of breezy
California sophistication. Come for coffee and a croissant, a healthy salad, or
a porchetta sandwich. It’s not fine dining. It’s about a rules-be-damned
freedom of choice. How Californian is that?” David Prior
FLORIDA
Alter, Miami
“Super-creative chef Brad Kilgore
is crushing it at this buzzy spot, which so perfectly fits the arty, vibrant
Wynwood vibe.” Peter Jon Lindberg
GEORGIA
Seabear Oyster Bar, Athens
“I still can’t get over chef
Patrick Stubbers’s pillowy Parker House rolls drenched in brown butter and
sprinkled with raw sugar and sea salt. Or his crispy, briny, deep-fried clam
strips. Or the icy Negroni slushies that go down just a little too easy.” Ashlea
Halpern, contributing editor
Two Urban Licks, Atlanta
“This is the restaurant that
kicked off the New American trend in Atlanta. Favorites include the salmon
chips, topped with fresh smoked salmon, capers, red onions, and a dab of
chipotle cream cheese; the brisket-filled empanadas; the scallops and grits;
and the rotisserie chicken with mac ’n’ cheese. Sit outside for a view of the
downtown Atlanta skyline.” Cherae Robinson, founder/CEO of Tastemakers Africa
HAWAII
Town, Honolulu
“Chef Ed Kenney, son of a famed
hula dancer is like Michael Pollan if Michael Pollan could surf, hunt wild
boar, and cook circles around any mainland chef.” Peter Jon Lindberg
ILLINOIS
Alinea, Chicago
“Relaunched in spring 2016 after
a top-to-bottom renovation, with a warmer and softer interior (a huge
improvement on the ascetic, hard-edged original) and more tasting menu options
for diners.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Au Cheval, Chicago
“I’ve only had 0.01 percent of
America’s burgers, but this is by far the best I’ve ever tasted.” Peter Jon
Lindberg
Could Au Cheval have the best
burger in America?
Next, Chicago
“Because the concept and menu
changes several times a year, this is definitely one to visit over and over.
Use their ticketing system, Tock, to secure a reservation. And follow them on
social media, because if there ever are last-minute cancellations, they offer
them up to their followers.”Sean Brock, chef/co-owner of Husk and McCrady’s in
Charleston
INDIANA
Milktooth, Indianapolis
“This breakfast-, brunch-, and
lunch-only restaurant in an airy converted garage wouldn’t touch eggs Benedict
with a 50-foot pole. And that’s what makes it so genius. Chef Jonathan Brooks
does wild things with Dutch baby pancakes; he puts egg salad and fried Lebanon
bologna on toast. Because why not?” Ashlea Halpern
LOUISIANA
Brennan’s, New Orleans
“The restaurant has been firmly
entrenched in the French Quarter since 1942, a maze of opulent dining rooms
surrounding a sun-drenched courtyard famous for an adorable family of turtles
that can often be found dozing on the fountain rocks. A recent renovation has
updated the decor, and Slade Rushing, their award-winning new chef, has gently
reimagined the timeless menu, keeping its Creole soul firmly intact.” Gail
Simmons, author, special projects director for Food & Wine, and judge on
Bravo’s Top Chef
Shaya, New Orleans
“A beautifully designed space
with tables close enough to feel the community but far enough apart for a
private dinner. I am British and never talk to the people at the table next to
me, but here you just want to share the joy of the food, ambience, and
service.” David Bowd, co-owner ofSalt House Inn and Eben House in Provincetown,
Mass.
MAINE
Eventide Oyster Co., Portland
“The oyster bar of your dreams:
briny half-shells most likely harvested that morning, note-perfect lobster
rolls, a killer wine list, and all sorts of unexpected treats on the daily
menu.” Peter Jon Lindberg
MARYLAND
Woodberry Kitchen, Baltimore
“Spike Gjerde’s restaurant
represents a recent phenomenon that I am very excited about in the United
States: small regional restaurants in unlikely places reinventing American
regional flavors and building a community around them.” Alice Waters
MASSACHUSETTS
Alden & Harlow, Boston
“The quickly sold-out burger is
the thing to get.” Sarah Khan
Oleana, Cambridge
“Long before Zahav in Philly,
chef Ana Sortun was introducing North African, Middle Eastern, and Turkish
spices, herbs, and techniques to American fine dining, and she’s stayed at the
forefront of Boston’s food scene ever since. Bonus points for the setting: a
gorgeous old Victorian house near Kendall Square with a backyard patio and
garden.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Proprietors, Nantucket
“This is the type of place where
you should go with a group of six or more and order as many items on the menu
as possible. Dishes come out as they’re ready, which makes for great flow. The
cocktails are top-notch, as are the pig-ear fries.” Rob Blood
NEVADA
Raku, Las Vegas
“When people say ‘No, really,
Vegas has amazing local restaurants if you know where to look,’ they invariably
mention Raku, a fantastically authentic Japanese restaurant/izakaya out on
Spring Mountain Road (Vegas’s Chinatown). This is where all the great chefs on
the Strip go after their shift—they serve until 3 or 4 a.m.” Peter Jon Lindberg
NEW YORK
Table on Ten, Bloomville
“The best artisanal pizza I've
ever ever had, and herby salads so fresh you can hear them growing. Yes, owner
Inez Valk was a model, and everyone is beautiful and funny, and there are movie
nights downstairs and guitar playing all summer long and, and, and...” Kate
Sekules
Brushland Eating House, Bovina
“Ex-Frankies/Prime Meats people.
Always impressive, delicious, friendly—and just a three-and-a-half-hour drive
from New York City.” Kate Sekules
Diner, Brooklyn
“It's in our own backyard and,
yeah, the burger's great, but Andrew Tarlow quietly invented a food movement
that's been pretty special here for more than 15 years.” Matt Duckor
Marlow & Sons, Brooklyn
“With Diner, Tarlow helped
transform what was once a desolate patch of Williamsburg into one of the
coolest neighborhoods in the city. But it's Diner's next-door neighbor and
sister restaurant, Marlow & Sons, that might be Tarlow's masterpiece.
There's a great tortilla Española and reliably wonderful brick chicken, a
clever list of natural wines, and probably the best playlist of any restaurant
in New York (well, if you like disco).” Gabe Ulla
Roberta’s, Brooklyn
“Wood-fired pizzas, in-house
charcuterie, an excellent wine list, a vegetable garden, and punk music in the
heart of Brooklyn, all of which comes together in the most natural way.” James
Henry
In a city that bleeds pizza, Roberta's is the
best.
Betony, Manhattan
“Caviar, buttery foie gras, fluke
carpaccio, velvety leek ravioli—all of the fine-dining elite can be found in a
restaurant that somehow manages to be unpretentious. The four-course menu or
chef's tasting menu are your best bets. All of the ingredients are superbly
fresh, and many of them come from farms upstate.” Cherae Robinson
Casellula, Manhattan
“One of the best cheese-centric
wine bars in the city. I usually order a bottle or two of wine, a large cheese
board, and the must-have Pig’s Ass Sandwich: a panino with brined ham and
roasted pork, cheddar, Fol Epi cheese, sweet pickles, and chipotle aioli.”
Edouardo Jordan, chef/owner ofSalare in Seattle
Eleven Madison Park, Manhattan
“If you’re going to spend $600
and four-plus hours on dinner for two, best that it feel light and breezy and
fluid and, above all, fun. Eleven Madison Park discards the weight and pretense
of the typical Michelin-three-star restaurant and replaces it with constant
surprises. Bonus points for the ‘dreamweaver’ team who can make an occasion
feel genuinely special and personalized.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Emilio’s Ballato, Manhattan
“One of the last restaurants that
clearly references the past of Nolita/SoHo—where rock stars, actors, and
old-school Italianos gathered for linguine Vongole and veal Milanese.” Matt
Rodbard
Estela, Manhattan
“The little New York restaurant
that could. Estela proves that a great night in the city needn’t be confined to
an overly stylized theme restaurant. Rather, the best meal in town could be
found at a marble bar just steps from noisy Houston Street. And chef Ignacio
Mattos's kohlrabi salad was an instant classic.” David Prior
Jean-Georges, Manhattan
“Jean-Georges Vongerichten is,
simply put, one of the greatest chefs of the modern era. His flagship
restaurant maintains the vitality and innovative spirit of an up-and-comer
while executing flawless cuisine like the savvy mainstay that it is.” Tim Ryan,
president of The Culinary Institute of America
Le Bernardin, Manhattan
“Le Bernardin proves every day
that fine dining can still be relevant and enjoyable. There is no better food,
service, or wine program.” Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain: "There is no better
food, service, or wine program than Le Bernardin."
Locanda Verde, Manhattan
“Andrew Carmellini’s Italian
restaurant at the Greenwich Hotel in TriBeCa is consistently great. The
masculine interior lends itself to ordering warming pasta dishes and a hearty
bottle of red. The white veal Bolognese alone is worth the cab fare.” Adam Hyman
of CODE Hospitality
Maharlika Filipino Moderno,
Manhattan
“Maharlika executes some of the
best Filipino cuisine outside Manila. Go for brunch and try the Filipino-style
fried chicken with purple yam waffles or one of the Silog options with
longganisa pork sausage and amazing garlic rice.” Cherae Robinson
Masa, Manhattan
“Masa has the best sushi rice—the
true determinant of great sushi—in the world. And the most impeccable fish,
too. Masa Takayama, if preparing the food himself, is one of the few world
masters you can still watch, eye to eye, make your dinner.” Anthony Bourdain
Per Se, Manhattan
“Thomas Keller's elegant
Manhattan jewel has never been better. His Oysters and Pearls is one of the
greatest dishes of all time, and a trip to Per Se without it is like a Paul
McCartney concert without ‘Yesterday.’”Tim Ryan
Superiority Burger, Manhattan
“Because Superiority Burger is
vegetarian, it’s on-trend, except it does it in a way that's cheeky and appeals
to non-vegetarians. Pete Wells gave it two stars in the Times, which was a
total upset because it's tiny and has only six desk-sized seats and blares punk
rock. The energy is totally contagious and I've caught the bug.” Charlotte
Druckman, food writer, co-founder of The Piglet, and author of Skirt Steak:
Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen
Wildair, Manhattan
“I love the fine choice of great
minimal-intervention wines, the staff knowledge and passion, the focus and
attention to detail, and the exceptional cooking skills of owners Jeremiah Stone
and Fabián von Hauske. They’re putting their heart and soul on the plate—and in
the glass—with quiet confidence and humility.” Kylie Kwong, chef/co-owner of
Billy Kwong in Sydney
Blue Hill at Stone Barns,
Pocantico Hills
“Dan Barber is among America’s
top three most influential chefs, and this restaurant is his showcase. Beyond
the farm-to-table movement, he’s constantly pushing the conversation forward on
things like whole-farm cooking, custom vegetable breeding, and food waste. A
meal at Blue Hill is like a conversation with Barber, where he shows you just
how stunning food can be while still adhering to environmental and moral
concerns. A noble cause doesn’t mean much if the restaurant is a bummer, but
Blue Hill is totally transporting.” Alan Sytsma
OREGON
Nong’s Khao Man Gai, Portland
“The downtown food cart is
branded into my memory for its chicken and rice. It's perfectly prepared and
comes with some of the best spicy chili sauce I've ever had. The best way to
enjoy the dish is to eat it while walking around Portland.” Ford Fry
PENNSYLVANIA
Zahav, Philadelphia
“Michael Solomonov channels the
Middle East, North Africa, and his native Israel with his light, bright,
intensely flavorful cooking. The hummus and house-made laffa alone are worth
the dinner price, as are the amazing salatim vegetable salads.” Peter Jon
Lindberg
SOUTH CAROLINA
The Wreck of the Richard &
Charlene, Mount Pleasant
“Named for a trawler impaled on
its site by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, The Wreck makes some of the best Low
Country–style seafood imaginable. Its menu of fried shrimp, scallops, and
oysters; hush puppies; and stone crab may sound similar to other seafood shacks
in the area, but the quality and care that goes into every one of their
perfectly golden seafood platters is unsurpassed.” Gail Simmons
TENNESSEE
Blackberry Farm, Walland
“Dining in The Barn at Blackberry
Farm, nestled deep in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, is Southern
hospitality at its finest. The tasting menu changes almost daily to showcase
produce, meat, and handmade cheeses from the surrounding area, a good portion
of which is grown or raised on-site. Guest chefs like Thomas Keller and David
Chang have been known to visit the property for culinary retreats, so it’s worth
checking the calendar to see who may be in the kitchen.” Gail Simmons
TEXAS
Uchi, Austin
“Tyson Cole is the patriarch of
the Austin food scene, and 13 years in, Uchi is still one of the great Japanese
restaurants in the country.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Some 13 years on, Uchi is still one of the
best Japanese restaurants in America.
Kim Phat Hu Tieu Nam Vang,
Houston
“The namesake hu tieu nam vang,
or Phnom Penh noodle soup, is even better than in Cambodia.” Deana Saukam
Oxheart, Houston
“Some of the best
vegetable-focused food in a city known for its meat.”Matt Duckor
VIRGINIA
Peter Chang, Glen Allen
“Peter Chang is a Szechuan god
and a legend in Virginia, where he operates many namesake restaurants. But this
location in a strip mall near Short Pump, just outside Richmond, is the best.
The dry-fried eggplant, tingly tofu-skin salad, and crispy pork belly are the
must-orders.” Matt Rodbard
VERMONT
Hen of the Wood, Waterbury
“I love this restaurant for chef
Eric Warnstedt's thoughtfulness toward ingredients and seasons, and his strong
ties to farmers and foragers. He serves up food that is straightforward and
delicious. My favorites are the house charcuterie plates, the braised pork, and
the perfect steak with awesome smoky potatoes.” Ford Fry
WASHINGTON
Canlis, Seattle
“The spectacular location of this
third-generation family-owned restaurant is bested only by its creative cuisine
and gracious hospitality. It is the only restaurant in America that has this
much history, yet continues to push, create, and maintain its relevancy. I
always return from a meal here feeling inspired—and with my passion for our
industry completely on fire.” Will Guidara, co-owner of Eleven Madison Park and
The NoMad in New York City
The Walrus and the Carpenter,
Seattle
“Experiencing Renee Erickson's
menu is like reliving her life as it relates to the food of the Northwest. The
menu changes daily, but a big plate of regional oysters is a must.” Ford Fry
CANADA + MEXICO
QUEBEC
Liverpool House, Montreal
“Exactly the kind of offal-y,
hearty cooking you crave on a winter’s night in Quebec.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Au Pied de Cochon Sugar Shack,
St. Benoît de Mirabel
“Chef Martin Picard is a demigod
of French-Canadian decadence. There’s no telling what he’ll prepare.
Reservations are taken via the website and usually fill up long before the
season even opens. Be flexible with your travel dates if you can.” Gail Simmons
MEXICO CITY
Contramar
“Gabriela Cámara’s ex¬traordinary
restaurant is always my first stop. It feels like the city’s dining room.”
Alice Waters
Contramar "feels like the city's dining
room."
El Bajío
“Their empanadas, made with
plantain dough and filled with black beans and cheese, are phenomenal. So are
the carnitas and crab with black salsa.” Ken Oringer
Pujol
“Chef Enrique Olvera’s ‘living’
mole has been stewing for hundreds of days—ingredients are added daily, so it’s
different every time you try it. This place is elegant but not stuffy. And it
won’t break the bank.” Gabe Ulla
TULUM
Cetli
“It serves authentic Yucatán
dishes in a dreamy setting, run out of a family home. You simply cannot go
wrong with the delicious white mole with fish and a spicy margarita.” Deana
Saukam
Hartwood
“I could eat here every night for
the rest of my life. The ceviches are otherworldly, and the whole grouper in
the wood oven is a must.” Ken Oringer
VERACRUZ
El Negro del Estero
“The focus is on the mariscos,
prepared as simply as possible. Crab claws, shrimp, and lobster are all served
platter-style with lime and salt. Try thepulque, made from agave, that tastes
like a sweet tequila.” Cherae Robinson
AFRICA + THE MIDDLE EAST
GHANA
Chez Clarisse, Accra
“Ivorian cuisine that’s heavy on
seafood. Get the wild tilapia with attiéké(cassava couscous) and alloco
(sautéed sweet plantains).” Cherae Robinson
Gold Coast Restaurant &
Cocktail Bar, Accra
“Sundays are for soup. The
nkatenkwan, or groundnut soup, is best eaten with your hands.” Cherae Robinson
SENEGAL
Chez Loutcha, Dakar
“Massive flavor. The best
thiéboudienne, or Senegalese fish and rice, you’ll find outside a local’s
home.” Cherae Robinson
SOUTH AFRICA
The Pot Luck Club, Cape Town
“My favorites: the chickpea
fries, pig’s head, and carrots with goat cheese ricotta. There’s also sweeping
views of Table Mountain. Make reservations months in advance.” Cherae Robinson
You won't forget your first meal at the Pot
Luck Club. And it won't be your last.
East Head Café, Knysna
“It’s touristy because it
overlooks the Knysna Heads, but I had two utterly memorable breakfasts here.”
Sarah Khan
Max’s Lifestyle, Umlazi
“The best place to get braai,
amazing South African–style grilled meat. Go on a Friday or Saturday night to
hear local Kwaito music.” Cherae Robinson
ISRAEL
Machneyuda, Jerusalem
“A joyfully chaotic spot just off
the Machane Yehuda market using fresh Israeli-grown ingredients.” Peter Jon
Lindberg
Studio Arcadia by Chef Ezra
Kedem, Jerusalem
“It’s a glass-enclosed dining
room atop an olive tree–covered hill outside the city. The food is simple but
extraordinary.” Anita Lo, chef/owner ofAnnisa
Simple but extraordinary: Studio Arcadia by
Chef Ezra Kedem.
Muscat Restaurant, Rosh Pina
“It’s the kind of place that
raises its own lamb and picks fresh produce at 2 p.m., then serves it at 7
p.m.” Michael Solomonov
Tzfon Abraxas, Tel Aviv
“Sit at the counter and eat
whatever the chef is preparing that day. If they have the baked hraime with
tomato and tahini, order it.” Alon Shaya, chef/partner of Shaya, Domenica, and
Pizza Domenica in New Orleans
Elbabor, Umm al-Fahm
“Outstanding Palestinian food,
and the Kebab Elbabor brings me to tears every time.” Michael Solomonov
LEBANON
Tawlet, Beirut
“It began as a development
project, bringing together female home cooks from various religious sects. It’s
since become a living catalog of Lebanon’s food tradition.” David Prior
ASIA
CHINA
Duck de Chine, Beijing
“My go-to place for Beijing duck.
They’re crisped in ovens using date wood to enhance the flavor.” Justin
Bergman, Shanghai correspondent for Monocle
Yu Zhi Lan, Chengdu
“Try the free-range duck egg-yolk
noodles, hand cut and served in a soup with two slices of truffle and baby bok
choy. Reservations are a must.”Justin Bergman
The Chairman, Hong Kong
“Call ahead to reserve the
steamed crab set atop fresh, wide rice noodles in a sauce of aged Shaoxing wine
and chicken oil.” Bill Addison
Lung King Heen, Hong Kong
“The best dim sum in the world.
Get a double order of the BBQ pork buns.” Deana Saukam
At Rōnin in Hong Kong, the menu
changes daily—but you know dishes will always be "raw,"
"smaller," or "bigger."
Rōnin, Hong Kong
“From Matt Abergel and Lindsay
Jang, the duo behind Yardbird, comes the nearly-impossible-to-find 24-seater.
Your reward is some of the most inventive Japanese-inspired seafood menus
around: flower crab with a sliver of uni, sea bream karaage (deep fried) with
pickled jalapeño tosazu, saba (mackerel) sashimi uncommonly paired with
persimmons, and the super-tender Kagoshima beef with mushroom that’s served
with egg yolk, to name a few. While the menu changes daily, the organizing
principle—‘raw,’ ‘smaller,’ and ‘bigger’—remains the same.” Pilar Guzmán
Tim Ho Wan, Hong Kong
“The baked buns with barbecued
pork and steamed egg cake are to die for.” Justin Bergman
INDIA
Bombay Canteen, Mumbai
“Amazing vibe, some of the best
Indian/fusion food I’ve ever had.” Sarah Khan
Bukhara, New Delhi
“We love that nothing about this
place—the decor, the yogurt and cane-vinegar marinated barrah kebab (leg of
lamb)—has changed in 30 years. The result is the most masterful North-West
Frontier tandoor-style cooking imaginable. Best of all, you eat everything with
your hands.” Pilar Guzmán
Indian Accent, New Delhi
“Unquestionably the best
restaurant in New Delhi, thanks to the baingan bharta, a classic Punjabi
eggplant dish served inside a cornetto cone made with sun-dried tomato. Dinner
reservations are tough—go for a weekday lunch.” Justin Bergman
JAPAN
Takotsubo, Hiroshima
“The freshest seafood from the
Seto Inland Sea. My order is different every time, depending on what the chef
recommends. Trust him.”Masaharu Morimoto, chef and TV personality
Otomezushi, Kanazawa
“You’ll get a tour of Toyama Bay
and beyond: four species of ebi; deep-sea bream, crunchy and sweet; raw firefly
squid; plus a duo of anago and unagi. It’s a meal you’ll never forget.” Luke
Burgess
Where Obama eats
sushi:Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo.
It's the best sushi in the world.
Come hungry—Jiro serves his nigiri one right after the other, so each piece is
super fresh and the perfect temperature. To get a reservation, have a friend
who speaks Japanese call months in advance. —Deana Saukam, food writer
Aronia de Takazawa, Tokyo
“This four-table tasting-menu
restaurant pushes the boundaries of Japanese cooking. You’re at the mercy of
the chef, but that is a great thing. Book far in advance.” Grant Achatz,
chef/co-owner of Alinea in Chicago
Eatrip, Tokyo
“This place is an island of
warmth in Tokyo.” Sam White, co-owner of Ramen Shop in Oakland, California
Ishikawa, Tokyo
“The kaiseki meals are perfectly
assembled, multi-course progressions that rarely hit a false note.” Gabe Ulla
Jimbocho Den, Tokyo
"To sit at Den’s eight-seat
counter is to dive headlong into an eight- to ten-course improv comedy show, as
38-year-old chef Zaiyu Hasegawa and his crew trot out surprise after kooky
surprise. There’s the grinning bobblehead of Zaiyu-san on the counter, the carrots
carved into smiley faces hiding in the salad greens, and the goofy homage to
KFC (delivered in a box marked “Den-tucky Fried Chicken”): Inside, what looks
like a normal fried chicken wing is stuffed with a mix of sticky rice,
potatoes, or beans and with seasonal ingredients such as
mushrooms and ume plum."Peter Jon Lindberg
To sit at Jimbocho Den’s eight-seat counter is
to dive headlong into an eight- to ten-course improv comedy show.
Kadowaki, Tokyo
“I loved the abalone with fish-liver
soy sauce—the ideal combination of briny-fresh seafood and umami.” Dominique
Ansel
Katsukura, Tokyo
“Get the tonkatsu, or fried pork
cutlet. The panko crust is light and crisp, the pork juicy and rich.” Mitchell
Davis
Kyubey, Tokyo
“The fish is insanely fresh, and
the attention to detail is remarkable. Theomakase is downright perfect.” Jose
Garces, chef/owner of Amada, Distrito,Tinto, and others in Philadelphia
L’Effervescence, Tokyo
“A feeling of calm washes over
you the moment you walk into this beautiful dining room. Don’t miss the
tableside tea service. It’s exquisite.”Sean Brock, chef/co-owner of Husk and
McCrady’s in Charleston
Mikawa Zezankyo, Tokyo
“I remember eating battered and
fried uni wrapped in shiso leaf and never wanting it to end.” Gabe Ulla
Sushi Saito, Tokyo
“One of the greatest sushi
omakases in the world.” Ken Oringer
Sushi Sho Tokyo
“The most extraordinary omakase
sushi meal no one can find.” Gail Simmons, author, special projects director
for Food & Wine, and judge on Bravo’s Top Chef
SushiYa, Tokyo
"Hidden in an alley off
another alley in Ginza, SushiYa (literally “Sushi Shop”) looks like your
typical sushi den but the fish—good God, the fish!Otoro tuna as fatty and
luscious as a slab of pancetta. Bonito smoked over straw. Hokkaido ikura, perked
up with yuzu zest. Right now, this is the best in town." Peter Jon
Lindberg
THE PHILIPPINES
Your Local, Makati
“I still dream of the pomelo
salad with shrimp, winged beans, wild rocket, yuzu, nam jim, pickled quail
eggs, and Thai coconut ‘ice cream.’ ” Ashlea Halpern
SINGAPORE
Burnt Ends
“Sit at the bar and watch them
break down a whole side of beef, then roast it in a 1,000-degree wood-fired
oven or grill it over coals.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Restaurant André
“French technique, Asian
influences, and seamless service.” Tim Ryan
Sin Huat Eating House
“A sweltering dump open to the
street and the prostitutes of Geylang. The chef wears shorts, a grotty T-shirt,
and rubber wellies. It’s also delicious. Get the crab bee hoon on rice
vermicelli.” Anthony Bourdain
SOUTH KOREA
Mingles, Seoul
“The modern restaurant movement
has arrived in Seoul, and Mingoo Kang is its leader.” Matt Rodbard
TAIWAN
Din Tai Fung, Taipei
“The best soup dumplings in the
world.” Deana Saukam
THAILAND
Nahm, Bangkok
“Eye-rolling deliciousness.” Myffy
Rigby
“Powerful, pungent, and
mouth-scorchingly hot.” David Prior
“Stratospheric.” Andy Ricker,
chef/owner of Pok Pok Restaurants
“Impressively complex.” Mitchell
Davis, executive vice president of the James Beard Foundation
VIETNAM
Cuc Gach Quán, Ho Chi Minh City
“Traditional Vietnamese served in
an elegant setting—a rarity here, since the best authentic food is usually
dished out in dives with plastic tables.”Peter Jon Lindberg
AUSTRALIA
Brae, Birregurra
“Faultless service and delicious
food that’s seamlessly paired with killer beverages. Simple as that.” Luke
Burgess
Franklin, Hobart
“Impeccable ultra-locavore
cooking from one of Australia’s top youngish chefs, who’s doing justice to the
incredible bounty of Tasmania.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Attica, Melbourne
“Ben Shewry’s cuisine is
thought-provoking and unusual... in a good way.” Simon Rogan, chef/owner of
L’Enclume in Cartmel, England
Ben Shewry's Attica in Melbourne is
"thought-provoking and unusual... in a good way."
Chin Chin, Melbourne
“One of the few places I’ve been
that really lives up to the hype. I went there twice on a three-day visit.”
Sarah Khan
Sean’s Panaroma, North Bondi
“Down-to-earth fresh seasonal
cooking that oozes with the endless warmth and charm of chef/owner Sean Moran.”
Kylie Kwong
Where every meal is absolutely
delicious: Cumulus Inc. in Melbourne. It's open for breakfast, lunch, and
dinner every day. Have a full English breakfast, foie gras parfait, sparklingly
fresh oysters, or the famous whole roast lamb shoulder. Order two lemon
curd–filled madeleines, baked to order, to take back to your hotel. —Julie
Gibbs, cookbook publisher
Bennelong, Sydney
“Reclaimed its spot in Sydney’s
top tier when Peter Gilmore took over the kitchen and made the tourist landmark
the Opera House smart and respectable again.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Bills, Sydney
“Pretty much invented Aussie
breakfast culture, then exported it worldwide.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Billy Kwong, Sydney
“Delicious Chinese food with
intriguing Australian notes.” Joanna Savill, food writer
Golden Century Seafood, Sydney
“Dave Chang called the pipis with
XO sauce and vermicelli his favorite dish on earth. Nobody goes here before
midnight.” Peter Jon Lindberg
Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney
“Try the live South Australian
clams steamed with serrano ham, white wine, and flageolet beans.” Kylie Kwong
Spice I Am, Sydney
“Still the best down-and-dirty
Thai food in town, and that’s saying something in Sydney.” Peter Jon Lindberg
CENTRAL + SOUTH AMERICA
ARGENTINA
La Cabrera, Buenos Aires
“Unbelievable steaks and grilled
sweetbreads and great Argentine wines. It’s B.A.’s most assured parrilla.”
Peter Jon Lindberg
Miramar, Buenos Aires
“This off-the-beaten-path cantina
porteña is the perfect lunch spot.” Ignacio Mattos, chef/co-owner of Estela and
Café Altro Paradiso in New York City
1884 Restaurante, Mendoza
“Francis Mallmann’s lavish steak
house inside the Escorihuela Gascón winery isn’t in a hurry—and you shouldn’t
be either. Have a Fernet and soda at the bar. Switch to a Malbec, something
made close by. Eventually, that perfectly wood-fired ojo de bife will arrive,
and you’re capping dinner with a brandy. Or two.” Paul Brady, senior editor
BOLIVIA
Gustu, La Paz
“Every glass of wine and beer is
produced in Bolivia. The caiman sashimi is caught by indigenous Tacana hunters
within a quota system that allows populations to stay healthy. When you’re
there, you have the feeling that you’re part of something important.” Nicholas
Gill, food writer
When you're at Gustu, "you have the
feeling that you’re part of something important."
BRAZIL
Bira de Guaratiba, Rio de Janeiro
“The authentic moqueca, Brazilian
fish stew, is amazing, as are the large prawns topped with crispy garlic
crumbs.” Margot Janse
Irajá, Rio de Janeiro
“Wildly creative Brazilian dishes
served inside (and outside) a beautiful old mansion.” Peter Jon Lindberg
D.O.M., São Paulo
“An amazing culinary celebration
of Brazil.” Margot Janse
CHILE
Boragó, Santiago
“They’ve been creating a database
of Chilean ingredients for years. So when an Atacama Desert herb is at its
peak, which may be only a few days per year, a foraging community collects it
for the restaurant. They put out around 500 dishes annually, some of which
might only appear during a single service.” Nicholas Gill
PERU
Central, Lima
“Chef Virgilio Martínez’s menu is
based on the altitudes of Peru, and while it might sound like a pretentious
conceit, it’s actually the clearest way to taste and understand the country’s
endemic ingredients. It’s an adventure into a food frontier, and Martínez is a
keen guide.” David Prior
La Mar, Lima
“The definition of ceviche in
Peru, and therefore the world. Pro tip: Don’t eat the black scallop unless you
have a stomach of steel.” Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli
URUGUAY
La Huella, Maldonado
“Pretty much your fantasy of a
beachside grill, albeit a haunt of the ultra-wealthy.” Peter Jon Lindberg
One day in New York City
(Sorry for the double photos, I'm still learning how to do this)
What a fantastic thing to do: This
Rio Restaurant Is Using Surplus Food From the Olympic Village to Feed the
Homeless
At Refettorio Gastromotiva, top
chefs from around the world are cooking five-star cuisine for the poor
By Andrew Jenner, Modern Farmer
It’s coming up on 1 p.m. on
Saturday, and the kitchen staff is hard at work. On one end, they’re chopping
cabbage, onions, chayote, and a chicken. On the other, another pair of cooks
preps a tangerine and carrot sorbet. Massimo Bottura—a dude with owlish glasses
whose establishment in Italy was just named the world’s best by the British
magazine, Restaurant—peeks over their shoulders with encouragement and a
caution: easy on the sugar, OK?
In the front of the house,
volunteers wander to and fro, harried people jab their phones, and a Telemundo
TV crew jockeys for a few minutes with Bottura and David Hertz, the Brazilian
chef and social entrepreneur who represents the other half of the brains behind
the place. Outside, a generator outside throws off diesel fumes and a hellish
racket, while construction workers tear apart the sidewalk to—Bottura and Hertz
desperately hope—fix some issue with the kitchen’s gas supply. It’s one of a
million little problems this little restaurant has faced, but Refettorio
Gastromotiva is the little restaurant that could.
“This place is a miracle,” says
Cristina Reni, who works for Bottura’s Italian nonprofit, Food for Soul,
which—along with Hertz’s organization,Gastromotiva and journalist Alexandra
Forbes—is the force behind the restaurant. “Everyone said ‘No’ to us in the
beginning.”
The basic concept behind
Refettorio Gastromotiva during the 2016 Olympics is simple: feed Rio de
Janeiro’s homeless population—which is estimated at 5,500—with surplus food.
We’re not talking about leftovers. This is food that would otherwise be wasted;
stuff that’s ugly or bruised or approaching expiration, from sources including
one of the main caterers at the Olympic Village. It’s a
two-birds-with-one-stone kind of solution: There are the hungry among us, yet
somewhere around one-third of the world’s food gets trashed.
Actually pulling the restaurant
off, however—in the eight short months from conceptualization to grand opening
on August 9—was definitely not simple. Construction, in what was a decaying
square in Rio’s Lapa neighborhood, happened in just 55 days (not counting
ongoing tweaks). The frazzled vibe is understandable. Don’t even get the
organizers started on the logistical wrangling—food suppliers, city hall, legal
technicalities, the Rio 2016 marketing apparatus—that preceded the opening of
what looks like a plain old high-concept restaurant but is actually a whole lot
more.
“We want to rebuild dignity,”
says Bottura, who credits the influence of Pope Francis with his foray in to
social justice.
That means the patrons—up to 108
of them each night, who live in Rio’s streets and shelters—are treated with
table service instead of plastic trays and a chow line, there’s art hanging on
the walls, and the food is prepared by a different name-brand chef each night
as if they were in their own restaurants. For tonight’s main course, Jorge
Vallejo from Mexico City’s Quintonil is working up a light molé. The kitchen
staff working under the guest chefs are students in the vocational training program
offered by Gastromotiva. In 2015 during the World’s Fair, Bottura ran a similar
project, Refettorio Ambrosiano, in an abandoned theater on the outskirts of
Milan where a rotating cast of chefs turned surplus food from an expo grocery
store into meals for the needy. One of the participating chefs was Hertz, who
called Bottura up last December and talked him into partnering on something
similar in Rio.
Hertz’s ambitions for Refettorio
Gastromotiva stretch well beyond the Olympics’ closing ceremony on August 21.
After the world moves on to other things, the communal kitchen and school
(Hertz’s mouthful of a term) get drawn into Gastromotiva’s larger
“social-gastronomic movement.” Its core is the program’s four-month training
program, offered for free to students from poor communities in several
Brazilian cities, and it’s designed to develop new technical kitchen skills,
self-esteem, and general life prospects that may otherwise have seemed out of
reach. About 2,500 people have graduated since Hertz founded the program in
2007.
After the Olympics, Gastromotiva
will keep the Rio restaurant open, using it as a new training facility for its
students. They’ll serve lunch to paying customers at lunchtime; they’ll use
that money to underwrite free dinners—made with surplus food—for the same needy
patrons who are eating there during the Olympics.
“This is social change through
food,” says Hertz, whose ideas have landed him recognitions like a TED
fellowship and a Young Global Leader nod from the World Economic Forum.
When people talk about Olympic
legacy projects, it’s usually about subway lines and stadiums and bobsled
chutes and other things unlikely to deliver much material benefit to the
neediest residents of the Olympic cities. If all goes as planned, Refettorio Gastromotiva
will be Rio 2016’s salt of the earth legacy, where the hungry find food and the
young staff discover new horizons.
There is precedent. The
restaurant that Bottura et. al set up in
Milan is still open, managed by a new community organization that hosts events
and puts out free food for those who need it with surplus from a grocery store.
The afternoon is wearing on.
Hertz looks at his phone in despair. New problems are flaring up. Pulling off a
visionary, innovative concept like Refettorio Gastormotiva isn’t all that
glamorous down in the trenches. Hertz says he is exhausted, but he loves what
he does.
The generator outside kicks it up
a notch. The gas-repair project does not appear to be finished. Tonight’s
guests arrive in a few short hours. Hertz fades off into the bustle. There is
much yet to be done.
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Books about the 1960's from LLR Books
Did
the Ancient Greeks Engage in Human Sacrifice?
The remains uncovered at an altar
to Zeus on Mount Lykaion may confirm legends about human sacrifice at the
shrine
By Jason Daley
The ancient Greeks are associated
with music, philosophy, logic and storytelling. So tales of human sacrifice in
the works of ancient writers including Plato are often chalked up as myths. But
the discovery of the remains of a male teenager at Mount Lykaion, the spot
where some Greeks made animal sacrifices to Zeus, may lend credence to those
tall tales.
Mizin Sidahmed at The Guardian
reports that the 3,000-year-old remains were discovered in an ash altar on the
mountain that is the earliest known site of worship for the god Zeus. The area
of the altar has been under excavation since 2006, and finds indicate it was
used by humans early as 5,000 years ago, even before the “birth” of Zeus in the
Greek world. Archaeologists have discovered lots of animals bones, as well as
pottery shards, metal objects and tripods in the area.
But until this summer, no hint of
human remains were found at Lykaion. “Several ancient literary sources mention
rumors that human sacrifice took place at the altar [of Zeus, located on the
mountain’s southern peak] but up until a few weeks ago there has been no trace
whatsoever of human bones discovered at the site,” David Gilman Romano,
professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Arizona who has worked at
the site tells Nicholas Paphitis at the AP. “Whether it’s a sacrifice or not,
this is a sacrificial altar ... so it’s not a place where you would bury an
individual. It’s not a cemetery.”
One of the more prominent stories
about human sacrifice on the mountain comes from the early Greek geographer
Pausanias in his Description of Greece. He tells the tale of Lycaon, the first
King of Arcadia, who according to one version of the story sacrificed one of
his sons and served him to the god Zeus at a dinner party. Zeus was enraged, and
he turned Lycaon and his other sons into wolves. Supposedly this led to an
annual tradition at the altar of Lykaion in which a boy would be slaughtered
along with animals. The meat would be cooked all together, and whoever ate the
human flesh would be turned into a wolf for nine years. If they did not eat
human flesh in that time, they were allowed to return to their original form.
If they did, they would remain a wolf forever.
The remains on Lykaion were found
deep in the ash pit, Sidahmed reports. They were laid in an east-west direction
with two lines of stones along the sides and other stone slabs on the pelvis.
Part of the upper skull was missing.
Jan Bremmer, professor emeritus
of religious studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands tells
Sidahmed he is skeptical that the remains are from a human sacrifice. He said
the idea of Greeks conducting human sacrifice is intriguing because it
contradicts widely held notions about the ancient society. “On the one hand
there’s this picture of Greece as the cradle of civilization, the birthplace of
democracy, of philosophy, of rational thinking,” he says. “But on the other
hand we have these cruel cruel myths.”
The researchers have not
speculated publicly on why, if the body is not a sacrifice, it was buried in
the ash pit. Future excavations at the site will show whether the skeleton is
an anomaly or if the area around the altar contains other human remains.
This is how novels are written.................
Dig to Find Fabled Nazi Gold Train Begins
Explorers believe the Nazis
stashed an armored train full of gold and weapons in tunnels in Poland's Owl
Mountains
By Jason Daley
There are lots of myths and
legends surrounding the final months of the Nazi regime. Some say high ranking
officials fled to a secret base built in the ice of Antarctica. Others claim
Adolf Hitler survived his Berlin bunker and made it to South America. But one
of the most enduring—and at least mildly plausible—stories is that at the end
of the war, the Nazis hid an entire train full of guns, gems, gold and valuable
art in a series of tunnels in a Polish mountain. Now, a pair of amateur
researchers have begun digging at the site where they believe that treasure
train is buried, the BBC reports, despite the fact that a team of geologists
and engineers failed last year to find any trace of train in the location
they're excavating.
As Danny Lewis reported for
Smithsonian.com, locals near the town of Walbryzych in the southwest of Poland
have a legend that an armored train full of Nazi loot was traveling out of the
nearby city of Wroclaw in 1945 when the Red Army began closing in. The train
disappeared near Książ Castle two miles outside of Walbrzych, and many believe
it was sequestered in a series of tunnels in the Owl Mountains, with at least
one German miner claiming that he saw soldiers wheeling the loot into the
tunnel.
A year ago, Piotr Koper, a
builder from Walbrzych, and Andreas Richter, a German genealogist, announced to
the world that they had discovered a bill of lading (a receipt of shipment)
detailing the train’s location. They even produced ground-penetrating radar
images that appear to show tanks sitting on train cars in a tunnel beneath the
ground. But imaging experts doubted the authenticity of the images. At the
time, the Polish culture minister said he was “99 percent sure” the train has
been found, Lewis reported in September.
Researchers from the Krakow University of Science and Technology,
however, spent a month using radar on the mountain, but failed to find anything
like the purported train, and by last December, the story was reported as
officially debunked.
But the doubt has not deterred
Koper and Richter, who are continuing on with the privately funded effort, Rick
Noack at The Washington Post. The duo along with a team of 33 others began
excavating the area where they believe the train lies yesterday. The team is
drilling three holes in the ground to probe for the train and hopes to have
answers by Thursday.
“The train is not a needle in the
haystack; if there is one, we will find it,” Andrzej Gaik, a spokesman for the
search committee tells Agence France-Presse. “If we find a tunnel, then that is
also a success. Maybe the train is hidden inside that tunnel.”
While academics and government
officials doubt anything will show up, there are some reasons to believe Nazi
loot and weapons may be stashed in the area. Hitler did order a vast system of
underground tunnels to be built in the Owl Mountains. Thousands of prisoners of
war constructed seven huge tunnels in the area as part ofProject Riese (Giant),
though the purpose for them remains unclear. The Nazis were also known to hide
stolen art and treasure in underground salt mines and tunnels. So, while the
story of the gold train remains unlikely, the treasure hunt chugs ahead.
This is just plain wrong and indecent
Love Truman Capote? Buy His Ashes
Is the sale of Capote’s earthy
remains a gauche publicity stunt or an act worthy of the audacious author?
Is it disrespectful to sell a
literary great’s remains—or is the stunt worthy of Capote himself?
By Erin Blakemore
From autographs to first
editions, letters to personal effects, it’s common to want to get closer to
your favorite author with a piece of literary memorabilia. But an upcoming
auction will take that concept to the next level when one lucky buyer gets
up-close and personal to Truman Capote—by purchasing his human remains.
In a press release publicizing
its 2016 “Icons and Idols: Hollywood” auction, Julien’s Auctions announced that
it will offer Truman Capote’s ashes for sale on its auction starting September
23. Contained in a Japanese carved wooden box, the ashes are expected to sell
for between $4,000 and $6,000.
Capote’s literary legacy is a
fraught subject, and the story of his death and cremation is just as
complicated. Capote’s good friend, Joanne Carson (wife of late-night king
Johnny Carson) who owned the ashes before her death in 2015, famously said that
her friend “crashed and burned because of the bitchiness of New York.”
She would know—after all, he died
in her home in 1984 from a likely overdose of pills. In death, Carson and
Capote remained as inseparable as they did during life when Carson apparently
split his cremated remains with novelist Jack Dunphy, and kept her portion in
the room in her home where he died. Over the years, the ashes lived a checkered
life of their own, from being stolen and replaced to being partially interred
at Los Angeles’ Westwood Memorial Park.
During his lifetime, Capote
gained a reputation as outsized as that of his most famous books, Breakfast at
Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. Immortalized as Dill in Harper Lee’s To Kill a
Mockingbird (rumors that he wrote it are unfounded), Capote went from
precocious child to bona fide enfant terribleduring his career. He gained fame
for his society connections, his embrace of his homosexuality at a time when
gay men were closeted and silenced, and his over-the-top antics, as when he
electrified New York with his sumptuous Black and White Ball and enraged his
friends with his roman à clef thatexposed the dark side of celebrity.
Capote’s self-pronounced
obsession with fame meant that his work—and his life—were under constant
scrutiny. To this day, people continue to fact-checkIn Cold Blood, a book that
launched the narrative non-fiction genre, anddissect his legacy.
Perhaps it’s appropriate, then,
that the sale of Capote’s ashes is as controversial as his ostentatious life.
Darren Julien, the CEO of Julien’s, tellsVanity Fair’s Julie Miller that
“Truman Capote loved the element of shock. He loved publicity. And I’m sure
he’s looking down laughing, and saying ‘That’s something I would have done.’”
Is it disrespectful to sell a
literary great’s remains—or is the stunt worthy of Capote himself? You be the
judge—that is, if you’re not rooting around for your wallet and $4,000 or so.
Science
Officially Debunks Chemtrails, But the Conspiracy Will Likely Live On
By Jason Daley
These days it's a common sight:
hazy streaks crisscrossing the sky left from passing aircrafts. But many people
believe there’s something more going on. Dubbing the contrails “chemtrails,”
conspiracy theorists have claimed that these trails of condensed water are part
of a secret program to control the weather, change the climate or control our
minds.
Conspiracy theorists have amassed
huge dossiers of “evidence” claiming that chemtrails are longer, brighter and
do not dissipate as quickly as normal aircraft contrails. They have photos,
anecdotes and samples collected from the air and water. Though scientists have
long battled against these unfounded claims, they haven't made much headway.
But with a recent study, researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science
hope to put these rumors to rest.
The researchers provided the
available chemtrail evidence to 77 atmospheric scientists and geochemists for
evaluation. “I felt it was important to definitively show what real experts in
contrails and aerosols think,” Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientists and
author on the study, says in a press release. “We might not convince die-hard
believers that their beloved secret spraying program is just a paranoid
fantasy, but hopefully their friends will accept the facts.”
In the study, published in the
journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists were asked if they had
ever uncovered possible evidence of a government chemtrail program in their
research. Of the 77 scientists, 76 said no.
They were also shown photos
supposedly containing chemtrails, writes Sara Emerson at Motherboard. Upon
inspection, none of the researchers saw any evidence that the contrails in the
photos were any different than normal contrails.
Finally, they were presented with
the analysis of samples from pond sediment, snow and air that the collectors
claim were contaminated with traces of barium, aluminum, copper and strontium
from chemtrails. The researchers said that 80 to 89 percent of the samples
could be explained by phenomena much more simple than chemtrails.
The chemtrails craze likely
originated with a 1996 report from the Air Force called “Weather as a Force
Multiplier,” which speculates how the military could develop weather
modification technology by 2025, report Annalee Newitz and Adam Steiner at i09.
A patent filed in 1991 for a technique of seeding the upper atmosphere with
particles that could reflect sunlight and slow global warming also intrigued
theorists. Combined with anecdotal tales of plants dying and people getting
sick after planesleft contrails above their homes, the conspiracy theory
coalesced and took off on the internet in the late 1990s.
Since then, the issue
periodically pops up in the media. According to Public Policy Polling, about
five percent of Americans believe in chemtrails. That’s more than the four
percent who believe lizard people are taking over our politics but much less
than the number who believe in bigfoot or that global warming is a hoax.
So, if it’s not a government
program, why do many people claim to see more and more contrails? Emerson says
airplane contrails are likely lasting longer than they used to due to changes
in jet engine technology. In addition, an increase in air travel over the last
couple decades could also be fueling the belief in chemtrails, says Caldeira,
and atmospheric changes from global warming may cause the artificial clouds to
linger longer than they used to.
Harvard Just Launched a Fascinating Resource
All About Bauhaus
The newly digitized collection is
as ambitious as the art school it documents
By Erin Blakemore
How much do you know about
Bauhaus? Okay, it’s fun to say, and the word draws up visions of artsy Germans,
blocky buildings or perhaps post-punk bands. But if your knowledge stops there,
never fear: Harvard just launched a digital resource that brings the artistic
movement to life.
The Bauhaus is Harvard’s new
portal into its hefty collections related to the art and design school. It
features more than 32,000 documents and images related to Bauhaus, from
architectural drawings to sketches, textile details and games. You can search
by artist, location, date or subject, or just browse around for what adds up to
a visual feast for design junkies.
There’s a reason Harvard has
collected so much Bauhaus memorabilia: The school, which existed between 1919
and 1933 in the German cities of Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, involved some of
the greatest creative minds of the 20th century. The physical Bauhaus
(“construction house”) was populated by architects, craftsmen and visual
artists with a lofty goal calledGesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) that
students hoped could some day integrate all forms of art. That utopic
vision—popularized by composer Richard Wagner years before—made it possible for
all kinds of artists to come together in what morphed from a location to a
European modernist movement that believed that form should follow function.
The Bauhaus was founded by Walter
Gropius, a utilitarian architect who believed that students should master all
forms of art and all media no matter what their ambitions. His teaching style
turned Bau, or building, into the center of everything with the goal of making
students masters of both form and construction. This thoroughly modern concept
attracted and shaped other great artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee,
Piet Mondrian, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Despite the freewheeling decadence
of Germany’sWeimar Republic years, Bauhaus became a touchstone for spare,
geometric and blocky design.
But as National Socialism rose in
Germany, it became clear that Bauhaus was doomed. Condemned as “Bolshevik” by
modern-art-hating Nazis, the Bauhaus was shuttered. Gropius fled to America,
and other Bauhaus artists went into voluntary exile, were kicked out of
Germany, or died in concentration camps as political dissidents. Despite its
abrupt end, the idea of Bauhaus served as a foundation for the art that was to
come—and a symbol of the creative flourishing of Europe between World Wars.
Harvard’s Bauhaus collection was
partially created by Gropius himself, as the university explains in a press
release: After World War II, the architect worked with the university to
collect art and archival material. His gift—and the creative explosion he
helped facilitate—has outlived war, social change and shifting artistic tastes.
Did the Bauhaus really achieve their goal of integrating all of the arts?
There’s only one way to find out: Dip into Harvard’s fascinating collection and
decide for yourself.
What
Books Would You Recommend Someone Read to Improve their General Knowledge of
the World?
Inspired by a reader’s question
to me, I thought I’d ask our followers onFacebook and Twitter for an answer to
the question: What books would you recommend someone read to improve their
general knowledge of the world.
I must say the number and quality
of the responses overwhelmed me. The box Amazon just delivered reminds me that
I ordered 9 books off this list.
Here is the list of what 55,000
of the smartest readers on the internet came up with, and what a list it is!
The Accidental Superpower: The
Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder
International strategist Peter
Zeihan examines how the hard rules of geography are eroding the American
commitment to free trade; how much of the planet is aging into a mass
retirement that will enervate markets and capital supplies; and how, against
all odds, it is the ever-ravenous American economy that-alone among the
developed nations-is rapidly approaching energy independence. Combined, these
factors are doing nothing less than overturning the global system and ushering
in a new (dis)order.
Sapiens: A Brief History of
Humankind
“I would recommend this book to
anyone interested in a fun, engaging look at early human history…you’ll have a
hard time putting it down.”— Bill Gates
How to Read a Book
This book impacted us so much we
created an entire course, The Art of Reading, around it.
A World History
William McNeill’s widely
acclaimed one-volume history emphasizes the four Old World civilizations of the
Middle East, India, China, and Europe, paying particular attention to their
interaction across time as well as the impact on historical scholarship in
light of the most recent archaeological discoveries. The engaging and
informative narrative touches on all aspects of civilization, including
geography, communication, and technological and artistic developments, and
provides extensive coverage of the modern era.
The intelligent man’s guide to
science
An Incomplete Education: 3,684
Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn’t
Here’s your chance to brush up on
all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all
the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments
in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you
could be!
A Short History of Nearly
Everything
Taking as territory everything
from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how
we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has
attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed)
archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their
offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their
books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful
minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it
is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and
entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson
can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
Slaughterhouse Five
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American
classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous
firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the
mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we
fear most.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude
tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of
Macondo through the history of the Buend; a family. Inventive, amusing,
magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women — brimming with
truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul — this novel is a
masterpiece in the art of fiction.
A History of the World in 100
Objects
Neil MacGregor has blazed an unusual
path to international renown. As director of the British Museum, he organized
an exhibit that aimed to tell the history of humanity through the stories of
one hundred objects made, used, venerated, or discarded by man. The exhibit and
its accompanying BBC radio series broke broadcasting records and MacGregor’s
book became a bestselling sensation on both sides of the Atlantic and a huge
Christmas hit, with more than 100,000 copies in print in the United States
alone.
23 Things They Don’t Tell You
about Capitalism
23 Things They Don’t Tell You
about Capitalism uses twenty-three short essays (a few great examples: “There
Is No Such Thing as a Free Market,” “The Washing Machine Has Changed the World
More than the Internet Has”) to equip readers with an understanding of how
global capitalism works, and doesn’t, while offering a vision of how we can
shape capitalism to humane ends, instead of becoming slaves of the market.
The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions
A good book may have the power to
change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our
daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for
granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and
still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When
it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and
philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d.
121–180) succeeded his adoptive father as emperor of Rome in a.d. 161—and
Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical
reflection ever written. With a profound understanding of human behavior,
Marcus provides insights, wisdom, and practical guidance on everything from
living in the world to coping with adversity to interacting with others.
Consequently, the Meditations have become required reading for statesmen and
philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the
straightforward intimacy of his style. In Gregory Hays’s new translation—the
first in a generation—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy: never
before have they been so directly and powerfully presented.
War and Peace
… broadly focuses on Napoleon’s
invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters
in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting
for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky,
who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha
Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men. As
Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse
backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with
the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the
novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some
of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.
Crime and Punishment
One of the supreme masterpieces
of world literature, Crime and Punishment catapulted Dostoyevsky to the
forefront of Russian writers and into the ranks of the world’s greatest
novelists. Drawing upon experiences from his own prison days, the author
recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an
impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between
good and evil. Believing that he is above the law, and convinced that humanitarian
ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old woman — a pawnbroker whom
he regards as “stupid, ailing, greedy…good for nothing.” Overwhelmed afterwards
by feelings of guilt and terror, Raskolnikov confesses to the crime and goes to
prison. There he realizes that happiness and redemption can only be achieved
through suffering. Infused with forceful religious, social, and philosophical
elements, the novel was an immediate success. This extraordinary, unforgettable
work is reprinted here in the authoritative Constance Garnett translation.
The Prince
The Prince shocked Europe on
publication with its advocacy of ruthless tactics for gaining absolute power
and its abandonment of conventional morality. Niccoló Machiavelli drew on his
own experience of office under the turbulent Florentine republic, rejecting
traditional values of political theory and recognizing the complicated,
transient nature of political life. Concerned not with lofty ideal but with a
regime that would last, The Prince has become the bible of realpolitik, and it
still retains its power to alarm and to instruct. In this edition,
Machiavelli’s tough-minded and pragmatic Italian is preserved in George Bull’s
clear, unambiguous translation.
The Art of War: The Essential
Translation of the Classic Book of Life
For more than two thousand years,
Sun-tzu’s The Art of War has provided leaders with essential advice on
battlefield tactics and management strategies. An elemental part of Chinese
culture, it has also become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival
and success, whether in battle, in business, or in relationships. Now, in this
crisp, accessible new translation, eminent scholar John Minford brings this
seminal work to life for today’s readers. Capturing the literary quality of the
work, Minford presents the core text in two formats: first, the unadorned
ancient words of wisdom ascribed to Sun-tzu; then, the same text with extensive
running commentary from the canon of traditional Chinese commentators. A
lively, learned introduction and other valuable apparatus round out this
authoritative volume.
Antifragile: Things That Gain
from Disorder
Just as human bones get stronger
when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when
someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress,
disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls
“antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need
it in order to survive and flourish.
The Denial of Death
Winner of the Pulitzer prize in
1974 and the culmination of a life’s work, The Denial of Death is Ernest
Becker’s brilliant and impassioned answer to the “why” of human existence. In
bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the
problem of the vital lie — man’s refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In
doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to
life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its
writing.
Nonzero: The Logic of Human
Destiny
(Robert) Wright asserts that,
ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms
and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges
of internal cooperation. Wright’s narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to
vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization,
uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful
stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way
of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests,
refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct
to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty,
profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how
we adapt to technology’s ongoing transformation of the world.
Zero to One: Notes on Startups,
or How to Build the Future
The great secret of our time is
that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to
create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows
how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media
In this pathbreaking work, now
with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary
to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous
in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they
defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups
that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful
of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
[O]ne of the most talked-about
climate change books of recent years, for reasons easy to understand: It tells
the controversial story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and
scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran
effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific
knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of
global warming is “not settled” have also denied the truth about studies
linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone
hole. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one tobacco executive. These “experts”
supplied it.
Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man
From the U.S. military in Iraq to
infrastructure development in Indonesia, from Peace Corps volunteers in Africa
to jackals in Venezuela, Perkins exposes a conspiracy of corruption that has
fueled instability and anti-Americanism around the globe, with consequences reflected
in our daily headlines. Having raised the alarm, Perkins passionately addresses
how Americans can work to create a more peaceful and stable world for future
generations.
Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Americans have lost touch with
their history, and in Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor James Loewen shows why.
After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he has
concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or
memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless
optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all
the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
The remarkable best-seller — a
long-lost, 300-year-old book of wisdom on how to live successfully yet
responsibly in a society governed by self-interest — as acute as Machiavelli
yet as humanistic and scrupulously moral as Marcus Aurelius.
The 48 Laws of Power
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and
instructive, The 48 Laws of Power is the definitive manual for anyone
interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to
Munger, 3rd Edition
My most gifted book.
Negotiating Your Salary: How To
Make $1000 a Minute
In addition to the basic rules of
negotiation, $1000 a Minute tells readers when to apply them. The book is
reorganized to tell: What to do at the start of the job search, how to “dodge”
the salary issue during the job search, what to prepare before a job interview,
when to enter into negotiations, and what order to ask for things. Special
training is provided in how NOT to jeapordize the offer you have and still
negotiate for the offer you want.
Against the Gods: The Remarkable
Story of Risk
In this unique exploration of the
role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing
risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times
from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual
adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the
powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today.
The Creators: A History of Heroes
of the Imagination
By piecing the lives of selected
individuals into a grand mosaic, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J.
Boorstin explores the development of artistic innovation over 3,000 years. A
hugely ambitious chronicle of the arts that Boorstin delivers with the scope
that made his Discoverers a national bestseller.
The User Illusion: Cutting
Consciousness Down to Size
As John Casti wrote, “Finally, a
book that really does explain consciousness.” This groundbreaking work by
Denmark’s leading science writer draws on psychology, evolutionary biology,
information theory, and other disciplines to argue its revolutionary point:
that consciousness represents only an infinitesimal fraction of our ability to
process information. Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and
discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world
around us. In fact, most of what we call thought is actually the unconscious
discarding of information. What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most
valuable part of ourselves, the “Me” that the “I” draws on for most of our
actions–fluent speech, riding a bicycle, anything involving expertise. No
wonder that, in this age of information, so many of us feel empty and
dissatisfied. As engaging as it is insightful, this important book encourages
us to rely more on what our instincts and our senses tell us so that we can
better appreciate the richness of human life.
The Grapes of Wrath
First published in 1939,
Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the
Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm
family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the
promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions
against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots
evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral
vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human
dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of
one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength,
the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very
nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic,
captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s
powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored
Oral History of Punk
A contemporary classic, Please
Kill Me is the definitive oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop
movements. Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, the Ramones, and scores of other punk
figures lend their voices to this decisive account of that explosive era. This
20th anniversary edition features new photos and an afterword by the authors.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses
and the Fall of New York
One of the most acclaimed books
of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The
Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of
twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have
known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most
powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city’s
politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that
plague us today.
Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland
Like No Other
“All stories are love stories,”
begins Eureka Street, Robert McLiam Wilson’s big-hearted and achingly funny
novel. Set in Belfast during the Troubles, Eureka Street takes us into the
lives and families of Chuckie Lurgan and Jake Jackson, a Protestant and a
Catholic—unlikely pals and staunch allies in an uneasy time. When a new work of
graffiti begins to show up throughout the city—“OTG”—the locals are stumped.
The harder they try to decipher it, the more it reflects the passions and
paranoias that govern and divide them. Chuckie and Jake are as mystified as
everyone else. In the meantime, they try to carve out lives for themselves in
the battlefield they call home. Chuckie falls in love with an American who is
living in Belfast to escape the violence in her own land; the best Jake can do
is to get into a hilarious and remorseless war of insults with a beautiful but
spitfire Republican whose Irish name, properly pronounced, sounds to him like
someone choking. The real love story in Eureka Street involves Belfast—the
city’s soul and spirit, and its will to survive the worst it can do to itself.
The Razor’s Edge
Larry Darrell is a young American
in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him
with some of Maugham’s most brilliant characters – his fiancée Isabel whose
choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott
Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham himself
wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with
their fates.
IDEAS: A HISTORY, From
Wittgenstein to the World Wide Web, Two Volumes in Slipcase
Letters From A Stoic
For several years of his
turbulent life, Seneca was the guiding hand of the Roman Empire. His inspired reasoning
derived mainly from the Stoic principles, which had originally been developed
some centuries earlier in Athens. This selection of Seneca’s letters shows him
upholding the austere ethical ideals of Stoicism—the wisdom of the
self-possessed person immune to overmastering emotions and life’s
setbacks—while valuing friendship and the courage of ordinary men, and
criticizing the harsh treatment of slaves and the cruelties in the gladiatorial
arena. The humanity and wit revealed in Seneca’s interpretation of Stoicism is
a moving and inspiring declaration of the dignity of the individual mind.
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The
Life and Times of America’s Banana King
The fascinating, untold tale of
Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside
banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary When Samuel Zemurray
arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in
the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest,
most powerful men in the world. Working his way up from a roadside fruit
peddler to conquering the United Fruit Company, Zemurray became a symbol of the
best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of
opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats
foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. Zemurray lived one of the
great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a
cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys,
mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From
hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American
governments and precipitating the bloody thirty-six-year Guatemalan civil war,
the Banana Man lived a monumental and sometimes dastardly life. Rich Cohen’s
brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a
hidden power broker, driven by an indomitable will to succeed.
The Master and His Emissary: The
Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
In a book of unprecedented
scope–now available in a larger format—Iain McGilchrist presents a fascinating
exploration of the differences between the brain’s left and right hemispheres,
and how those differences have affected society, history, and culture.
McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent research in neuroscience and
psychology to reveal that the difference is profound: the left hemisphere is
detail oriented, while the right has greater breadth, flexibility, and
generosity. McGilchrist then takes the reader on a journey through the history
of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as
revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists from Aeschylus to
Magritte.
Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart tells two
intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo
village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict
between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the
tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash
of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of
aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are
informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature,
human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.
Decolonising the Mind: The
Politics of Language in African Literature
Ngugi describes this book as ‘a
summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for
the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in
teaching of literature’.
The Origin of Wealth: The Radical
Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society
Over 6.4 billion people participate
in a $36.5 trillion global economy, designed and overseen by no one. How did
this marvel of self-organized complexity evolve? How is wealth created within
this system? And how can wealth be increased for the benefit of individuals,
businesses, and society? In The Origin of Wealth, Eric D. Beinhocker argues
that modern science provides a radical perspective on these age-old questions,
with far-reaching implications. According to Beinhocker, wealth creation is the
product of a simple but profoundly powerful evolutionary formula:
differentiate, select, and amplify. In this view, the economy is a “complex
adaptive system” in which physical technologies, social technologies, and
business designs continuously interact to create novel products, new ideas, and
increasing wealth. Taking readers on an entertaining journey through economic
history, from the Stone Age to modern economy, Beinhocker explores how
“complexity economics” provides provocative insights on issues ranging from
creating adaptive organizations to the evolutionary workings of stock markets
to new perspectives on government policies. A landmark book that shatters
conventional economic theory, The Origin of Wealth will rewire our thinking
about how we came to be here—and where we are going.
The Company of Strangers: A
Natural History of Economic Life
The Company of Strangers shows us
the remarkable strangeness, and fragility, of our everyday lives. This
completely revised and updated edition includes a new chapter analyzing how the
rise and fall of social trust explain the unsustainable boom in the global
economy over the past decade and the financial crisis that succeeded it.
Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and
literature, Paul Seabright explores how our evolved ability of abstract
reasoning has allowed institutions like money, markets, cities, and the banking
system to provide the foundations of social trust that we need in our everyday
lives. Even the simple acts of buying food and clothing depend on an astonishing
web of interaction that spans the globe. How did humans develop the ability to
trust total strangers with providing our most basic needs?
Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man
When first published, Marshall
McLuhan’s Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects
of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. This
edition of McLuhan’s best-known book both enhances its accessibility to a
general audience and provides the full critical apparatus necessary for
scholars. In Terrence Gordon’s own words, “McLuhan is in full flight already in
the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls ‘the
creative process of knowing.'” Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics
McLuhan’s preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained.
Probes, or aphorisms, were an indispensable tool with which he sought to prompt
and prod the reader into an “understanding of how media operates” and to
provoke reflection. In the 1960s McLuhan s theories aroused both wrath and
admiration. It is intriguing to speculate what he might have to say 40 years
later on subjects to which he devoted whole chapters such as Television, The
Telephone, Weapons, Housing and Money. Today few would dispute that mass media
have indeed decentralized modern living and turned the world into a global
village.
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit
and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition
Letters From A Self-made Merchant
To His Son
Lorimer’s Letters From A
Self-Made Merchant To His Son is a timeless collection of Gilded Age aphorisms
from a rich man – a prosperous pork-packer in Chicago to his son, Pierrepont,
whom he ‘affectionately’ calls ‘Piggy.’ The writing is subtle and brilliant.
The Song of the Dodo: Island
Biogeography in an Age of Extinction
David Quammen’s book, The Song of
the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope,
far-reaching in its message — a crucial book in precarious times, which
radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place
in that world. It’s also a book full of entertainment and wonders. In The Song
of the Dodo, we follow Quammen’s keen intellect through the ideas, theories,
and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries. We trail
after him as he travels the world, tracking the subject of island biogeography,
which encompasses nothing less than the study of the origin and extinction of
all species. Why is this island idea so important? Because islands are where
species most commonly go extinct — and because, as Quammen points out, we live
in an age when all of Earth’s landscapes are being chopped into island-like
fragments by human activity. Through his eyes, we glimpse the nature of
evolution and extinction, and in so doing come to understand the monumental
diversity of our planet, and the importance of preserving its wild landscapes,
animals, and plants. We also meet some fascinating human characters. By the
book’s end we are wiser, and more deeply concerned, but Quammen leaves us with
a message of excitement and hope.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates
of Human Societies
In this “artful, informative, and
delightful” (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond
convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the
modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced
beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion –as well as nasty
germs and potent weapons of war –and adventured on sea and land to conquer and
decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human
societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came
to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the
Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California’s Gold Medal.
World Order
Henry Kissinger offers in World
Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global
disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the
modern era—advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the
central foreign policy events of recent decades—Kissinger now reveals his
analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to build a
shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives,
violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.
What Went Wrong?: The Clash
Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
For centuries, the world of Islam
was in the forefront of human achievement — the foremost military and economic
power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization.
Christian Europe was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from
which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed. The
West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and then in the
marketplace. In this elegantly written volume, Bernard Lewis, a renowned
authority an Islamic affairs, examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic
world as it tried to make sense of how it had been overtaken, overshadowed, and
dominated by the West. In a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil, Lewis
shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European
weaponry, industry, government, education, and culture. He also describes how
some Middle Easterners fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, while others
asked not “Who did this to us?” but rather “Where did we go wrong?”
Thinking, Fast and Slow
In the international bestseller,
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner
of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind
and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast,
intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more
logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties
of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of
cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our
next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two
systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively
conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust
our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers
practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our
business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to
guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the
National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book
Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best
books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.
Pride and Prejudice
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets
eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he
is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that
Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend
Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than
ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the
folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the
friendships,gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
Living within Limits: Ecology,
Economics, and Population Taboos
In Living Within Limits, Hardin
focuses on the neglected problem of overpopulation, making a forceful case for
dramatically changing the way we live in and manage our world. Our world itself,
he writes, is in the dilemma of the lifeboat: it can only hold a certain number
of people before it sinks–not everyone can be saved. The old idea of progress
and limitless growth misses the point that the earth (and each part of it) has
a limited carrying capacity; sentimentality should not cloud our ability to
take necessary steps to limit population. But Hardin refutes the notion that
goodwill and voluntary restraints will be enough. Instead, nations where
population is growing must suffer the consequences alone. Too often, he writes,
we operate on the faulty principle of shared costs matched with private
profits. In Hardin’s famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” he showed how
a village common pasture suffers from overgrazing because each villager puts as
many cattle on it as possible–since the costs of grazing are shared by
everyone, but the profits go to the individual. The metaphor applies to global
ecology, he argues, making a powerful case for closed borders and an end to
immigration from poor nations to rich ones. “The production of human beings is
the result of very localized human actions; corrective action must be
local….Globalizing the ‘population problem’ would only ensure that it would
never be solved.” Hardin does not shrink from the startling implications of his
argument, as he criticizes the shipment of food to overpopulated regions and
asserts that coercion in population control is inevitable. But he also proposes
a free flow of information across boundaries, to allow each state to help
itself.
The Book: On the Taboo Against
Knowing Who You Are
At the root of human conflict is
our fundamental misunderstanding of who we are. The illusion that we are
isolated beings, unconnected to the rest of the universe, has led us to view
the “outside” world with hostility, and has fueled our misuse of technology and
our violent and hostile subjugation of the natural world. In The Book,
philosopher Alan Watts provides us with a much-needed answer to the problem of
personal identity, distilling and adapting the ancient Hindu philosophy of
Vedanta to help us understand that the self is in fact the root and ground of
the universe. In this mind-opening and revelatory work, Watts has crafted a
primer on what it means to be human—and a manual of initiation into the central
mystery of existence.
The Cave and the Light: Plato
Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
Accessible, riveting, and
eloquently written, The Cave and the Light provides a stunning new perspective
on the Western world, certain to open eyes and stir debate.
How to Win Friends and Influence
People
Dale Carnegie’s time-tested
advice has carried millions upon millions of readers for more than seventy-five
years up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. Now the
first and best book of its kind has been rebooted to tame the complexities of
modern times and will teach you how to communicate with diplomacy and tact,
capitalize on a solid network, make people like you, project your message
widely and clearly, be a more effective leader, increase your ability to get
things done, and optimize the power of digital tools.
Learn or Die: Using Science to
Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization
Learn or Die examines the process
of learning from an individual and an organizational standpoint. From an
individual perspective, the book discusses the cognitive, emotional,
motivational, attitudinal, and behavioral factors that promote better learning.
Organizationally, Learn or Die focuses on the kinds of structures, culture,
leadership, employee learning behaviors, and human resource policies that are
necessary to create an environment that enables critical and innovative
thinking, learning conversations, and collaboration. The volume also provides
strategies to mitigate the reality that humans can be reflexive, lazy thinkers
who seek confirmation of what they believe to be true and affirmation of their
self-image. Exemplar learning organizations discussed include the secretive
Bridgewater Associates, LP; Intuit, Inc.; United Parcel Service (UPS); W. L.
Gore & Associates; and IDEO.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good
People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
As America descends deeper into
polarization and paralysis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done the seemingly
impossible—challenged conventional thinking about morality, politics, and
religion in a way that speaks to everyone on the political spectrum. Drawing on
his twenty five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, he shows
how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why
liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about
right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its
central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key
to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our
eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for
understanding, read The Righteous Mind.
The Future of the Mind: The
Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
The Future of the Mind brings a
topic that once belonged solely to the province of science fiction into a
startling new reality. This scientific tour de force unveils the astonishing
research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the
latest advancements in neuroscience and physics—including recent experiments in
telepathy, mind control, avatars, telekinesis, and recording memories and
dreams. The Future of the Mind is an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration
of the frontiers of neuroscience. Dr. Kaku looks toward the day when we may
achieve the ability to upload the human brain to a computer, neuron for neuron;
project thoughts and emotions around the world on a brain-net; take a “smart
pill” to enhance cognition; send our consciousness across the universe; and
push the very limits of immortality.
The Lessons of History
With their accessible compendium
of philosophy and social progress, the Durants take us on a journey through
history, exploring the possibilities and limitations of humanity over time.
Juxtaposing the great lives, ideas, and accomplishments with cycles of war and
conquest, the Durants reveal the towering themes of history and give meaning to
our own.
How To Lie With Statistics
Darrell Huff runs the gamut of
every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study,
the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are
derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which
are used to full rather than to inform.
1984
1984 was George Orwell’s chilling
prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative
is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the
world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No
one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple
generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that
seems only to grow with the passage of time.
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade
Shaped the World
Acclaimed by readers and critics
around the globe, A Splendid Exchange is a sweeping narrative history of world
trade—from Mesopotamia in 3000 B.C. to the firestorm over globalization
today—that brilliantly explores trade’s colorful and contentious past and
provides new insights into its future.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Translated into 100 languages,
winner of the National Book Award, and named one of the 100 Most Influential
Books since World War II by the Times Literary Supplement, Anarchy, State and
Utopia remains one of the most theoretically trenchant and philosophically rich
defenses of economic liberalism to date, as well as a foundational text in
classical libertarian thought. With a new introduction by the philosopher
Thomas Nagel, this revised edition will introduce Nozick and his work to a new
generation of readers.
A Theory of Justice
Since it appeared in 1971, John
Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised
the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have
found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the
common core of the democratic tradition–justice as fairness–and to provide an
alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of
political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of
the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and
liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. “Each person,” writes Rawls,
“possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society
as a whole cannot override.” Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson,
and Lincoln, Rawls’s theory is as powerful today as it was when first
published.
The Arthashastra
Kautilya: The Arthashastra,
published in 2000 by Penguin Classics is the English edition of the classic
treatise on classical economics and political science by the ancient Indian
philosopher Kautilya. The text of this great book includes 15 books, each
addressing one topic pertaining to the state and its economy. The books include
topics like the law, the king, foreign policy, discipline, capturing a
fortress, and the duties of the government rulers. Kautilya explains in detail
the duties and virtues of an ideal king. The descriptions include a break up of
what the ideal king should do during the course of the day and how the king
should behave in typical situations. The Arthashashtra also includes detailed
strategies like gift, bribery, illusion, and strength to deal with the neighbouring
countries. The other important sections of the book include maintenance of law
and order in the state, forests and wildlife, and economic ideas. The book
discusses how the Mauryans protected forest wealth, including trees and
animals. The importance of maintaining law and order for smooth functioning of
the state is also given importance.
Godel, Esher, Bach: An Eternal
Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter’s book is
concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems.
However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental
activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the
formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a
formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human
intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating
ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and
much more.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds
This classic survey of crowd
psychology offers an illuminating and entertaining look at three grand-scale
swindles. Originally published in England in 1841, its remarkable tales of
human folly reveal that the hysteria of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the
junk-bonds frenzy of the 1980s were far from uniquely twentieth-century
phenomena. The first of the financial scandals discussed, “The Mississippi
Scheme,” concerns a disastrous eighteenth-century plan for the commercial
exploitation of the Mississippi valley, where investors were lured by
Louisiana’s repute as a region of gold and silver mountains. During the same
era, thousands of English investors were ruined by “The South-Sea Bubble,” a
stock exchange based on British trade with the islands of the South Seas and
South America. The third episode involves Holland’s seventeenth-century
“Tulipomania,” when people went into debt collecting tulip bulbs — until a
sudden depreciation in the bulbs’ value rendered them worthless (except as
flowers). Fired by greed and fed by naiveté, these historic investment
strategies gone awry retain an irrefutable relevance for modern times.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions is essential and enthralling reading for
investors as well as students of history, psychology, and human nature.
Thinking Strategically: The
Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life
Thinking Strategically is a crash
course in outmaneuvering any rival. This entertaining guide builds on scores of
case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling.
It outlines the basics of good strategy making and then shows how you can apply
them in any area of your life.
The Einstein Factor: A Proven New
Method for Increasing Your Intelligence
New research suggests that the
superior achievements of famous thinkers may have been more the result of
mental conditioning than genetic superiority. Now you can learn to condition
your mind in the same way and improve your performance in virtually all aspects
of mental ability, including memory, quickness, IQ, and learning capacity.
MILWAUKEE
NOTEBOOK: WILKIE JAMES AND THE MEASURE OF GREATNESS
Posted by Carl Swanson
Garth “Wilkie” James, brother of the famed
novelist Henry James, is buried in Milwaukee’s Forest Home Cemetery.
The five children of Henry James
Sr. include some of America’s greatest thinkers. Henry’s oldest son and
namesake, Henry James Jr., wrote 22 novels, hundreds of short stories, and many
volumes of biographies, travel writing, art criticism, and memoirs.
A second son, William James,
became an eminent philosopher and educator and is considered the father of
American psychology. A third son, Robert, a promising artist and writer, was
plagued by alcoholism throughout his adult life. Sister Alice taught history
but suffered from psychological and physical illness much of her life. Alice’s
sharply observed and insightful diaries, published after her death, are still
widely read and admired.
Then there is the fourth son,
Garth Wilkinson “Wilkie” James. Born in New York City in 1845, Wilkie was an
undistinguished student, experienced many failures and died young and
penniless.
Of all the James family siblings,
guess who ended up in Milwaukee.
There is much more to Wilkie. He
was an idealist. A war hero. A devoted friend to many and a loving family man.
The five James children had an
unusual upbringing. On inheriting a vast fortune, the patriarch of the clan
devoted most of his time to intellectual pursuits. (His circle of friends
included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.) James provided an
informal education for his children consisting of lessons taught by a
succession of sometimes eccentric tutors, interrupted by frequent trips to the
museums, art galleries, and cultural centers of Europe.
Shortly before the outbreak of
the Civil War, Henry James Sr. enrolled his two youngest sons, Wilkie and
Robert, in Franklyn Sanborn’s Concord Academy. Henry James Sr. approved of
Sanborn’s educational ideas and admired his opposition to slavery. A close
friend of radical abolitionist John Brown, the schoolmaster was one of six
people having advance knowledge of Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry. The
unsuccessful attempt to instigate a slave uprising ended in Brown’s capture by
a U.S. Army officer named Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried, found guilty, and
executed by hanging. Two of John Brown’s daughters were students at Concord
Academy when Wilkie and Bob arrived in 1860.
A surviving letter describes
Wilkie in his boarding school days, “Wilkie was incomparable: Besides being the
best-dressed boy in school, and in manner and talk the most engaging, his good
humor was inexhaustible.”
War broke out in 1861. Fired by
the fervent anti-slavery climate of Concord Academy, both Wilkie and Bob
enlisted in the Union Army.
“When I went to war I was a boy
of 17 years of age, the son of parents devoted to the cause of the Union and
the abolition of slavery,” Wilkie recalled in a speech to Union veterans years
later. “I had been brought up in the belief that slavery was a monstrous wrong,
its destruction worthy of a man’s best efforts, even unto the laying down of
life.”
Wilkie enlisted in 1862, the same
year the North reluctantly allowed black Americans to join the military – on
the condition they served under white officers. Both Wilkie and Bob volunteered
to serve as officers in black regiments. This did not make the boys universally
popular. Racism was common on both sides of the Civil War. White officers
assigned to lead black regiments faced ridicule, even outright hatred from
civilians and fellow soldiers. It was also a decision that carried added risk,
for white officers of black regiments were, by order of the Confederate
Congress, to be executed on the spot if captured.
Wilkie’s regiment – the 54th
Massachusetts Infantry – was one of the first formed. In his letters home,
Wilkie protested the unfair treatment of the men under his command (black
soldiers earned $7 a month in cash while white soldiers received $13) but added
proudly, “They are cut out for soldiers in every way.”
On July 16, 1863, the 54th
Massachusetts first encountered Confederate troops and succeeded in driving off
a squadron of rebel cavalry after a sharp fight near Charleston, S.C. The clash
was significant because the much-despised black soldiers saved an all-white
regiment, the 10th Connecticut, from near-certain annihilation.
A newspaper reporter of the time
wrote, “The boys of the 10th Connecticut could not help loving the men who
saved them from destruction … the dark-skinned heroes fought the good fight and
covered with their own brave hearts the retreat of the brothers, sons, and
fathers of Connecticut.”
Later, in a speech delivered in
Milwaukee, Wilkie recalled, “It had become a living, breathing suspicion with
us … that all white troops abhorred our presence in the army. Can you not
readily share with me that indescribable sensation which a youthful soldier
feels, who placed in a like situation, leading heroic negro soldiers on to
victorious battle?”
Days later, in one of the
inexplicable and bloody blunders that mark the actions of both sides in the
Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts under the command of its Harvard-educated
colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, was ordered to lead the assault on Fort Wagner on
Morris Island, a heavily defended rebel earthworks guarding Charleston harbor.
(The regiment’s attack was the subject of the 1989 movie Glory.)
Historian Jane Maher describes
the battle this way: “The initial attack on Fort Wagner was one of the worst
debacles of the Civil War. It was poorly planned and even more poorly
executed.”
The terrain funneled the
advancing 54th into a narrow, concentrated target for the fort’s massed rifles
and artillery. It was more a slaughter than a battle. In the aftermath, a
Confederate officer wrote, “The dead and wounded were piled up in a ditch
together, sometimes fifty in a heap, and they were strewn all over the plain
for a distance of three-fourths of a mile … The negroes fought gallantly and
were headed by as brave a colonel who ever lived.”
Wilkie, a few steps behind when
Col. Shaw died, recalled the battle in his Milwaukee speech, “Gathering
together a knot of men after the suspense of a few seconds, I waved my sword
for a further charge toward the living line of fire above us. We had gone then
some thirty yards, groping, but determinedly onwards … the ranks mowed down at
almost every step. Suddenly a shell tore my side. In the frenzy of excitement,
it seemed a painless visitation … A still further advance brought us to the
second obstruction … in front of the ditch. The enemy’s fire did not abate for
this crossing, and here it was I received my second wound, a canister ball in
my foot.”
Canister rounds were one of the
most feared weapons of the Civil War. As troops approached, artillery gunners
would fire canisters packed with .69-caliber lead shot, effectively turning
their cannons in gigantic shotguns.
“As I stood faltering with the
shock of this wound,” Wilkie said, “the advancing column, passing by me and
over me, with deafening shouts and deafening curses, filled the alternating
spaces of deathly missiles in the atmosphere.”
Badly wounded, Wilkie managed to
drag himself behind a ridge of sand. Here, two medical orderlies, retreating
from the now-lost battle, loaded him on a stretcher. As they started carrying
him to the rear, “A round shot blew off the head of one of the stretcher
bearers, producing a horrible and instant death,” Wilkie said. “We all fell
down together, except the companion stretcher bearer, who betook himself in a
lively manner to the fastness of some secluded sand hole.”
The last thing Wilkie recalled
before losing consciousness was a fellow soldier, his lower jaw shot completely
away, who dragged himself to Wilkie and hovered over him with his blood pouring
down on Wilkie’s face.
Wilkie woke up the next morning,
three miles away, lying on the ground among hundreds of wounded and dying
soldiers in an improvised field hospital, where a handful of medical
professionals and civilian volunteers struggled to save who they could.
Harriet Tubman was among the
volunteers at Morris Island. An escaped slave who returned south time and again
to lead more than 300 slaves to freedom, Tubman served the Union Army as a
cook, nurse – and spy. On June 2, 1863, she guided 150 soldiers and two
gunboats on a route she had scouted up the Combahee River. The raid freed 727
slaves, burned several plantations, and captured Confederate supplies.
It was the first time in American
history a woman – and a civilian at that – planned and carried out a military
operation.
Tubman watched the assault at
Fort Wagner. She later recalled, “And then we saw the lightning, and that was
the guns; and then we heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and then we
heard the rain falling, and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get
in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.”
Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton
also served at Morris Island. A young patent office clerk in Washington, D.C.
when war broke out, she was one of the Union’s first civilian volunteers. She
organized donations of supplies, prepared food for the soldiers, and tended to
the wounded – often rushing in while the fight was still raging. At the Battle
of Antietam, a bullet passed between her arm and her body, tearing a hole in
her sleeve and killing the soldier she was tending. She made a point of never
mending the bullet hole in her garment. Another time a shell blew in the door
of the room she in which she worked. She carried on as though nothing happened.
Barton organized the field
hospitals after the unsuccessful assault on Fort Wagner. After Union forces
finally captured Morris Island, Barton wrote, “We have captured one fort –
Gregg – and one charnel house – Wagner – and we have built one cemetery, Morris
Island. The thousand little sand hills that in the pale moonlight are a
thousand headstones, and the restless ocean waves that roll and breakup on the
whitened beach sing an eternal requiem to the toll-worn gallant dead who sleep
beside.”
Harriet Tubman spent most of her
time carrying for the wounded. She vividly recalled the scene, “I would go to
the hospital early every morning. I would get a big chunk of ice and put it in
a basin, and fill it with water; then I would take a sponge and begin. The
first man I would come to, I would thrash away the flies, and they would rise
like bees around a hive. Then I would begin to bathe their wounds, and by the
time I had bathed three or four, the heat would have melted the ice and made
the water warm, and it would be was red as blood. Then I would go and get more
ice, and by the time I got to the next ones, the flies would be around the
first ones, black and thick as ever.”
In 2016, it was announced former
slave Harriet Tubman’s image would replace that of Andrew Jackson – himself a
slaveholder – on the U.S. $20 bill.
Clara Barton went on to establish
the American Red Cross.
Just one more of the endless
wounded on the sands of Morris Island, Wilkie was oblivious to all this. A
massive infection had set in and he probably would have died there had it not
been for a family friend, Cabot Russell, who came across Wilkie while searching
the hospital for his own missing son. When his search proved unsuccessful (his
son, he later learned, had died in the initial assault), Russell returned to
Massachusetts with Wilkie in his care. On the trip home, a naval surgeon
finally removed the canister shot embedded in Wilkie’s shattered foot. The
injury would cause him lifelong pain.
Wilkie had a prolonged and slow
recovery. Although he could have resigned his commission honorably, he insisted
on rejoining his troops in the field. After re-injuring his foot in a fall, and
after another lengthy recovery, he was appointed aide de camp to General
Gillmore and promoted to the rank of Captain.
When Charleston surrendered, in
February 1865, Wilkie was there to witness the event. He was recognized by a
reporter from the Boston Journal who wrote, “I saw a young officer, looking
musingly and long toward Morris Island – sitting there, the old flag floating
over his head, apparently unconscious of everything around him. He walked away
at last – rather haltingly, for he was lame and wounded – still gazing toward
[Fort] Wagner.”
After the surrender ceremony,
Wilkie escorted the Confederate governor of South Carolina back home. As they
rode together, the governor complained to Wilkie of the hardships Southern
civilians were experiencing. Wilkie wrote, “Just think of this immense
slaveholder telling me … the pants he had on were the only ones he possessed.”
The irrepressible Wilkie promptly offered to give the governor his own pants,
“which he refused, however.”
Wilkie and brother Bob suffered
greatly in the war (Bob had nearly died of sunstroke while campaigning in
Florida). The physically disabled Wilkie and his emotionally scarred brother
had trouble finding jobs in Massachusetts when the war ended in 1865. Bob,
through a family friend, eventually landed a position with a railroad in Iowa.
With Wilkie in need of an occupation, Henry James Sr. offered to bankroll the
purchase of land in Florida and place Wilkie in charge. The idea was to
establish a large farming operation to provide employment for newly freed
slaves. It wasn’t entirely altruistic. The Jameses, like many Northerners of
the time, snapped up cheap land in the devastated south in the expectation of
vast profit.
But crops were poor. Wilkie knew
little of farming and was unprepared for the hatred he encountered from the
region’s long-time white residents. Finally, land values plummeted and the
James’ family investment ended in ruin.
Bob, troubled and restless, had
joined Wilkie in the Florida venture for a time, then moved on again, ending up
in Milwaukee working for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul RR. Wilkie, at
loose ends, joined his brother in Milwaukee and went to work for the same
railroad.
In Milwaukee, both men fell in
love and married woman of prominent local families.
Bob married Mary Lucinda Holton,
daughter of Milwaukee businessman Edward Holton, in 1872. Wilkie married
Caroline “Carrie” Cary, daughter of prominent early settler Joseph Cary, in
1873. They had two children: Joseph and Alice.
Wilkie quit his job and started
his own business supplying railroad construction materials. He and a partner
had close ties to influential people in the Milwaukee Road and the company’s
success seemed guaranteed. However, a nationwide financial panic wiped out the
fledgling company and with it Wilkie’s savings. He had even borrowed against
his life insurance policy.
About this time, his novelist
brother Henry James described Wilkie in a letter to a friend, “He is not
particularly successful, as success is measured in this country; but he is always
rotund and good-natured and delightful.”
He was also, although his brother
was unaware of it at the time, increasingly ill. His wartime injury continued
to trouble him and he seriously considered having his leg amputated. Other
aches and pains developed and worsened, followed by a heart condition. Finally,
a doctor diagnosed Bright’s disease, a then-untreatable and fatal kidney
ailment.
Two months before his death,
Wilkie wrote to his older brother William, “I am trying to gain strength if I
can to bridge over the increasing demands on any vitality, This I do very
slowly, having lost nearly all my appetite – so that it looks as if it would
not be long before I shall peg out.”
Wilkie died on November 15, 1883.
His passing did not go unnoticed. The New York Times ran an obituary, as did
the Boston Evening Transcript.
The Milwaukee Sentinel devoted an
entire column to Wilkie’s passing, “He possessed rare conversational powers,
and was eminently social in his nature. He was a delightful companion, genial,
unpretending, genuine. Everybody that knew him loved him, and his death will
cause unaffected sorrow through the wide circle of his friends.”
Wilkie was 38 when he died. He
left behind a wife and two children, aged 7 and 9, and a staggering amount of
debt from his failed businesses. As his brother noted, Wilkie was not a
success, as success is measured in this country.
But there are other ways to gauge
a man’s worth.
Publisher
Set to Release Exact Replicas of the World's Most Mysterious Manuscript
There will be 898 copies made of
the coded Voynich Manuscript, which has stumped scholars for over a century
By Jason Daley
There are plenty of challenging
reads out there, like Finnegans Wake orGravity’s Rainbow. But those are nursery
rhymes compared to the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious text full of strange
botanical drawings and an unknown script that has put scholars and code
breakers in a frenzy since it was last discovered by Polish-American book dealer
Wilfrid Voynich in 1912.
While interested readers have,
for some time, had access to photos of the pages, the manuscript itself is
locked away in Yale University’s rare books collection. But that will soon
change. As Ben Guarino reports at The Washington Post, Spanish publisherSiloé
has been granted permission to make copies of the book, and will produce 898
“clones” of the manuscript, reproducing each water stain, worm hole and strange
illustration. So far, about 300 pre-orders of the reproductions have been
purchased at around $8,000 each.
The idea is to get the manuscript
into the hands of more libraries and more scholars in the hopes of cracking the
code. “Touching the Voynich is an experience,” Juan Jose Garcia, editor at
Siloé, which spent 10 years trying to get permission from Yale to reproduce the
manuscript tells Agence France-Presse. “It’s a book that has such an aura of
mystery that when you see it for the first time ... it fills you with an
emotion that is very hard to describe.”
The origin of the manuscript is
not completely known. Radio carbon dating places the paper in the 15th century,
though the writing may have taken place in the 16th century as well, according
to Yale University. It is thought that the book may be the work of English scientist
and philosopher Roger Bacon, and that the manuscript was once in the possession
of John Dee, an astrologer, mathematician and polymath that advised both Mary I
and Elizabeth I. The book eventually made it into the hands of Emperor Rudolph
II of Germany before being passed along, fading out of history until Voynich
found it in a Jesuit college near Rome.
Since then, scholars have
attempted to figure out the meaning of the strange 240-page text. The first
part includes 113 drawings of botanical specimens that don’t seem to correspond
with any known plants, Yale University writes. The second section contains
astral charts and drawings. Other sections contain drawings of female nudes
near strange tubes, descriptions of medicinal herbs and long stretches of
indecipherable writing in an unknown alphabet.
“The Voynich Manuscript has led
some of the smartest people down rabbit holes for centuries,” Bill Sherman of
the Folger Shakespeare Library, who curated an exhibit on the book told Sadie
Dingfelder at The Washington Post. “I think we need a little disclaimer form
you need to sign before you look at the manuscript, that says, ‘Do not blame us
if you go crazy.’ ”
Some people claim the whole thing
is an elaborate hoax or that the language is complete nonsense. But a 2013
paper examining the strange language determined that the distribution of the
unique alphabet and words is consistent with a real language. Then, in 2014, a
professor from England claimed he’d deciphered 14 words in the text, including
the names of the plants hellebore, juniper and coriander.
According to the AFP, the Yale
library gets thousands of emails per month from codebreakers who think they
have figured out the text. Rene Zandbergen who runs a blog dedicated to the
manuscript claims that 90 percent of the rare book library’s online users are
accessing digital images of the manuscript.
It will take Siloé about 18
months to begin producing the facsimile editions. But for those who cannot wait
that long or don't want to pony up thousands of dollars for an unreadable book,
Yale University Press is releasing its own version of the Voynich Manuscript in
November, which includes critical essays and fold-out sections of the text for
$50.
F.
Scott Fitzgerald's Last Unpublished Works to Be Released Next Year
I'd Die For You is slated to come
out in April of 2017.
by CAROLINE HALLEMANN
More than 75 years after the
Great Gatsby author's death, Simon & Schuster's Scribner imprint will
publish "the last remaining unpublished and uncollected short stories by
F. Scott Fitzgerald."
The collection includes works
that were "submitted to major magazines and accepted for publication
during Fitzgerald's lifetime but were never printed."
It will also feature stories
"that could not be sold because their subject matter or style departed
from what editors expected of Fitzgerald in the 1930s," according to a
statement from the publisher.
The author preferred to keep the
writing unpublished rather than have it be censored, so readers should expect
I'd Die For You to be a bit more controversial than the Fitzgerald tomes taught
in high school English classes across the country. For example, the title story
of the collection was inspired by the time Fitzgerald spent in North Carolina,
when he and his wife Zelda were suffering from severe health issues.
The book, which was edited by F.
Scott Fitzgerald scholar Anne Margaret Daniel, isn't out until April 11, 2017,
but super fans can go ahead and pre-order it onamazon.com.
If music be the food of love,
play on.
Visit our Shakespeare Blog at the
address below
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
TRUE CRIME
BY JOHN WILLIAM TUOHY
BY JOHN WILLIAM TUOHY
ROGER TOUHY, CHICAGO GANGSTER, NOW IN PAPERBACK
ROGER TOUHY,
THE LAST GANGSTER
Editorial
Reviews
From
Publishers Weekly
JFK's
pardons and the mob; Prohibition, Chicago's crime cadres and the staged
kidnapping of "`Jake the Barber'" Factor, "the black sheep brother
of the cosmetics king, Max Factor"; lifetime sentences, attempted jail
busts and the perseverance of "a rumpled private detective and an
eccentric lawyer" John W. Tuohy showcases all these and more sensational
and shady happenings in When Capone's Mob Murdered Roger Touhy: The Strange
Case of Touhy, Jake the Barber and the Kidnapping that Never Happened. The
author started investigating Touhy's 1959 murder by Capone's gang in 1975 for
an undergrad assignment. He traces the frame-job whereby Touhy was accused of
the kidnapping, his decades in jail, his memoirs, his retrial and release and,
finally, his murder, 28 days after regaining his freedom. Sixteen pages of
photos.
From
Library Journal
Roger
Touhy, one of the "terrible Touhys" and leader of a bootlegging
racket that challenged Capone's mob in Prohibition Chicago, had a lot to answer
for, but the crime that put him behind bars was, ironically, one he didn't
commit: the alleged kidnapping of Jake Factor, half-brother of Max Factor and
international swindler. Author Tuohy (apparently no relation), a former staff
investigator for the National Center for the Study of Organized Crime, briefly
traces the history of the Touhys and the Capone mob, then describes Factor's
plan to have himself kidnapped, putting Touhy behind bars and keeping himself
from being deported. This miscarriage of justice lasted 17 years and ended in
Touhy's parole and murder by the Capone mob 28 days later. Factor was never
deported. The author spent 26 years researching this story, and he can't bear
to waste a word of it. Though slim, the book still seems padded, with
irrelevant detail muddying the main story. Touhy is a hard man to feel sorry
for, but the author does his best. Sure to be popular in the Chicago area and
with the many fans of mob history, this is suitable for larger public libraries
and regional collections. Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH
BOOK
REVIEW
John
William Tuohy, one of the most prolific crime writers in America, has penned a
tragic, but fascinating story of Roger Touhy and John Factor. It's a tale born
out of poverty and violence, a story of ambition gone wrong and deception on an
enormous, almost unfathomable, scale. However, this is also a story of triumph
of determination to survive, of a lifelong struggle for dignity and redemption
of the spirit.
The
story starts with John "Jake the Barber" Factor. The product of the
turn of the century European ethnic slums of Chicago's west side, Jake's
brother, Max Factor, would go on to create an international cosmetic empire.
In
1926, Factor, grubstaked in a partnership with the great New York criminal
genius, Arnold Rothstien, and Chicago's Al Capone, John Factor set up a stock
scam in England that fleeced thousands of investors, including members of the
royal family, out of $8 million dollars, an incredible sum of money in 1926.
After
the scam fell apart, Factor fled to France, where he formed another syndicate
of con artists, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo by rigging the tables.
Eventually,
Factor fled to the safety of Capone's Chicago but the highest powers in the
Empire demanded his arrest. However, Factor fought extradition all the way to
the United States Supreme Court, but he had a weak case and deportation was inevitable.
Just 24 hours before the court was to decide his fate, Factor paid to have
himself kidnapped and his case was postponed. He reappeared in Chicago several
days later, and, at the syndicates' urging, accused gangster Roger Touhy of the
kidnapping.
Roger
"The Terrible" Touhy was the youngest son of an honest Chicago cop.
Although born in the Valley, a teeming Irish slum, the family moved to rural
Des Plains, Illinois while Roger was still a boy. Touhy's five older brothers
stayed behind in the valley and soon flew under the leadership of
"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor. By 1933, three of them would be shot dead
in various disputes with the mob and one, Tommy, would lose the use of his legs
by syndicate machine guns. Secure in the still rural suburbs of Cook County,
Roger Touhy graduated as class valedictorian of his Catholic school.
Afterwards, he briefly worked as an organizer for the Telegraph and
Telecommunications Workers Union after being blacklisted by Western Union for
his minor pro-labor activities.
Touhy
entered the Navy in the first world war and served two years, teaching Morse
code to Officers at Harvard University.
After
the war, he rode the rails out west where he earned a living as a railroad
telegraph operator and eventually made a small but respectable fortune as an
oil well speculator.
Returning
to Chicago in 1924, Touhy married his childhood sweetheart, regrouped with his
brothers and formed a partnership with a corrupt ward heeler named Matt Kolb,
and, in 1925, he started a suburban bootlegging and slot machine operation in
northwestern Cook County. Left out of the endless beer wars that plagued the
gangs inside Chicago, Touhy's operation flourished. By 1926, his slot machine
operations alone grossed over $1,000,000.00 a year, at a time when a gallon of
gas cost eight cents.
They
were unusual gangsters. When the Klu Klux Klan, then at the height of its
power, threatened the life of a priest who had befriended the gang, Tommy
Touhy, Roger's older brother, the real "Terrible Touhy," broke into
the Klan's national headquarters, stole its membership roles, and, despite an
offer of $25,000 to return them, delivered the list to the priest who published
the names in several Catholic newspapers the following day.
Once,
Touhy unthinkingly released several thousand gallons of putrid sour mash in to
the Des Plains River one day before the city was to reenact its discovery by
canoe-riding Jesuits a hundred years before. After a dressing down by the towns
people Touhy spent $10,000.00 on perfume and doused the river with it, saving
the day.
They
were inventive too. When the Chicago police levied a 50% protection tax on
Touhy's beer, Touhy bought a fleet of Esso gasoline delivery trucks, kept the
Esso logo on the vehicles, and delivered his booze to his speakeasies that way.
In
1930, when Capone invaded the labor rackets, the union bosses, mostly Irish and
completely corrupt, turned to the Touhy organization for protection. The
intermittent gun battles between the Tuohy’s and the Capone mob over control of
beer routes which had been fought on the empty, back roads of rural Cook
County, was now brought into the city where street battles extracted an awesome
toll on both sides. The Chicago Tribune estimated the casualties to be one hundred
dead in less than 12 months.
By
the winter of 1933, remarkably, Touhy was winning the war in large part because
joining him in the struggle against the mob was Chicago's very corrupt, newly
elected mayor Anthony "Ten percent Tony" Cermak, who was as much a
gangster as he was an elected official.
Cermak
threw the entire weight of his office and the whole Chicago police force behind
Touhy's forces. Eventually, two of Cermak's police bodyguards arrested Frank
Nitti, the syndicate's boss, and, for a price, shot him six times. Nitti lived.
As a result, two months later Nitti's gunmen caught up with Cermak at a
political rally in Florida.
Using
previously overlooked Secret Service reports, this book proves, for the first
time, that the mob stalked Cermak and used a hardened felon to kill him. The
true story behind the mob's 1933 murder of Anton Cermak, will changes histories
understanding of organized crimes forever. The fascinating thing about this
killing is its eerie similarity to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas thirty
years later, made even more macabre by the fact that several of the names
associated with the Cermak killing were later aligned with the Kennedy killing.
For
many decades, it was whispered that the mob had executed Cermak for his role in
the Touhy-syndicate war of 1931-33, but there was never proof. The official
story is that a loner named Giuseppe Zangara, an out-of-work, Sicilian born
drifter with communist leanings, traveled to Florida in the winter of 1933 and
fired several shots at President Franklin Roosevelt. He missed the President,
but killed Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak instead. However, using long lost
documents, Tuohy is able to prove that Zangara was a convicted felon with long
ties to mob Mafia and that he very much intended to murder Anton Cermak.
With
Cermak dead, Touhy was on his own against the mob. At the same time, the United
States Postal Service was closing in on his gang for pulling off the largest
mail heists in US history at that time. The cash was used to fund Touhy's war
with the Capone’s. Then in June of 1933, John Factor en he reappeared, Factor
accused Roger Touhy of kidnapping him. After two sensational trials, Touhy was
convicted of kidnapping John Factor and sentenced to 99 years in prison and
Factor, after a series of complicated legal maneuvers, and using the mob's
influence, was allowed to remain in the United States as a witness for the
prosecution, however, he was still a wanted felon in England.
By
1942 Roger Touhy had been in prison for nine years, his once vast fortune was
gone. Roger's family was gone as well. At his request, his wife Clara had moved
to Florida with their two sons in 1934. However, with the help of Touhy's
remaining sister, the family retained a rumpled private detective, actually a
down-and-out, a very shady and disbarred mob lawyer named Morrie Green.
Disheveled
of not, Green was a highly competent investigator and was able to piece
together and prove the conspiracy that landed Touhy in jail. However, no court
would hear the case, and by the fall of 1942, Touhy had exhausted every legal
avenue open to him. Desperate, Touhy hatched a daring daylight breakout over
the thirty foot walls of Stateville Prison. The sensational escape ended three
months later in a dramatic and bloody shootout between the convicts and the
FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.
Less
than three months after Touhy was captured, Fox Studios hired producer Brian
Foy to churn out a mob financed docudrama film on the escape entitled,
"Roger Touhy, The Last Gangster." The executive producer on the film
was Johnny Roselli, the hood who later introduced Judy Campbell to Frank
Sinatra. Touhy sued Fox and eventually won his case and the film was withdrawn
from circulation. In 1962, Columbia pictures and John Houston tried to produce
a remake of the film, but were scared off the project.
While
Touhy was on the run from prison, John Factor was convicted for m ail fraud and
was sentenced and served ten years at hard labor. Factor's take from the scam
was $10,000,000.00 in cash.
Released
in 1949, Factor took control of the Stardust Hotel Casino in 1955, then the
largest operation on the Vegas strip. The casino's true owners, of course, were
Chicago mob bosses Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Murray Humpreys and Sam Giancana.
From 1955 to 1963, the length of Factor's tenure at the casino, the US Justice
Department estimated that the Chicago outfit skimmed between forty-eight to 200
million dollars from the Stardust alone.
In
1956, while Factor and the outfit were growing rich off the Stardust, Roger
Touhy hired a quirky, high strung, but highly effective lawyer named Robert B.
Johnstone to take his case. A brilliant legal tactician, who worked incessantly
on Touhy's freedom, Robert Johnstone managed to get Touhy's case heard before
federal judge John P. Barnes, a refined magistrate filled with his own
eccentricities. After two years of hearings, Barnes released a 1,500-page
decision on Touhy's case, finding that Touhy was railroaded to prison in a
conspiracy between the mob and the state attorney's office and that John Factor
had kidnapped himself as a means to avoid extradition to England.
Released
from prison in 1959, Touhy wrote his life story "The Stolen Years"
with legendary Chicago crime reporter, Ray Brennan. It was Brennan, as a young
cub reporter, who broke the story of John Dillenger's sensational escape from
Crown Point prison, supposedly with a bar of soap whittled to look like a
pistol. It was also Brennan who brought about the end of Roger Touhy's mortal
enemy, "Tubbo" Gilbert, the mob owned chief investigator for the Cook
County state attorney's office, and who designed the frame-up that placed Touhy
behind bars.
Factor
entered a suit against Roger Touhy, his book publishers and Ray Brennan,
claiming it damaged his reputation as a "leading citizen of Nevada and a
philanthropist."
The
teamsters, Factor's partners in the Stardust Casino, refused to ship the book
and Chicago's bookstore owners were warned by Tony Accardo, in person, not to
carry the book.
Touhy
and Johnstone fought back by drawing up the papers to enter a $300,000,000
lawsuit against John Factor, mob leaders Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo and Murray
Humpreys as well as former Cook County state attorney Thomas Courtney and Tubbo
Gilbert, his chief investigator, for wrongful imprisonment.
The
mob couldn't allow the suit to reach court, and considering Touhy's
determination, Ray Brennan's nose for a good story and Bob Johnstone's legal
talents, there was no doubt the case would make it to court. If the case went
to court, John Factor, the outfit's figurehead at the lucrative Stardust
Casino, could easily be tied in to illegal teamster loans. At the same time,
the McClellan committee was looking into the ties between the teamsters, Las
Vegas and organized crime and the raid at the mob conclave in New York State
had awakened the FBI and brought them into the fight. So, Touhy's lawsuit was,
in effect, his death sentence.
Twenty-five
days after his release from twenty-five years in prison, Roger Touhy was gunned
down on a frigid December night on his sister's front door.
Two
years after Touhy's murder, in 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered
his Justice Department to look into the highly suspect dealings of the Stardust
Casino. Factor was still the owner on record, but had sold his interest in the
casino portion of the hotel for a mere 7 million dollars. Then, in December of
that year, the INS, working with the FBI on Bobby Kennedy's orders, informed
Jake Factor that he was to be deported from the United States before the end of
the month. Factor would be returned to England where he was still a wanted
felon as a result of his 1928 stock scam. Just 48 hours before the deportation,
Factor, John Kennedy's largest single personal political contributor, was
granted a full and complete Presidential pardon which allowed him to stay in
the United States.
The
story hints that Factor was more than probably an informant for the Internal
Revenue Service, it also investigates the murky world of Presidential pardons,
the last imperial power of the Executive branch. It's a sordid tale of abuse of
privilege, the mob's best friend and perhaps it is time the American people
reconsider the entire notion.
The
mob wasn't finished with Factor. Right after his pardon, Factor was involved in
a vague, questionable financial plot to try and bail teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa
out of his seemingly endless financial problems in Florida real estate. He was
also involved with a questionable stock transaction with mobster Murray
Humpreys. Factor spent the remaining twenty years of his life as a benefactor
to California's Black ghettos. He tried, truly, to make amends for all of the
suffering he had caused in his life. He spent millions of dollars building
churches, gyms, parks and low cost housing in the poverty stricken ghettos.
When he died, three United States Senators, the Mayor of Los Angles and several
hundred poor Black waited in the rain to pay their last respects at Jake the
Barber's funeral.
Interesting Information on A Little Known
Case
By Bill Emblom
Author John Tuohy, who has a
similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no
relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer
baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday.
Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting
a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on
Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by President-elect
Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies. The author
details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the Barber" Factor
who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing a prison sentence
there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights violated and sent to
prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never happened. Factor and other
Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the Stardust Casino in Las
Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled and planned to write his
life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy had to be eliminated.
Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after gaining his freedom. Jake
Factor had also spent time in prison in the United States for a whiskey swindle
involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days before Factor was to be deported
to England to face prison for the stock swindle President Kennedy granted
Factor a full Presidential Pardon after Factor's contribution to the Bay of
Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author notes, issued 472 pardons (about half
questionable) more than any president before or since.
There are a number of books on
Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron
from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that
will hold your interest.
GREAT
BOOK FROM CHICAGO AND ERA WAS MY DAD'S,TRUE TO STORY
Very good book. Hard to put down
Bymistakesweremadeon
Eight long years locked up for a
kidnapping that was in fact a hoax, in autumn 1942, Roger Touhy & his gang
of cons busted out of Stateville, the infamous "roundhouse" prison,
southwest of Chicago Illinois. On the lam 2 months he was, when J Edgar &
his agents sniffed him out in a run down 6-flat tenement on the city's far
north lakefront. "Terrible Roger" had celebrated Christmas morning on
the outside - just like all square Johns & Janes - but by New Year's Eve,
was back in the bighouse.
Touhy's arrest hideout holds
special interest to me because I grew up less than a mile away from it. Though
I never knew so til 1975 when his bio was included in hard-boiled crime
chronicler Jay Robert Nash's, Badmen & Bloodletters, a phone book sized
encyclopedia of crooks & killers. Touhy's hard scrabble charisma stood out
among 200 years' worth of sociopathic Americana Nash had alphabetized, and
gotten a pulphouse publisher to print up for him.
I read Nash's outlaw dictionary
as a teen, and found Touhy's Prohibition era David vs Goliath battles with
ultimate gangster kingpin, Al Capone quite alluring, in an anti-hero sorta way.
Years later I learned Touhy had written a memoir, and reading his The Stolen
Years only reinforced my image of an underdog speakeasy beer baron - slash
suburban family man - outwitting the stone cold killer who masterminded the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
Like most autobiographies tho,
Touhy's book painted him the good guy. Just an everyday gent caught up in
events, and he sold his story well. Had I been a saloonkeeper back then I could
picture myself buying his sales pitch - and liking the guy too. I sure bought
into his tale, which in hindsight criminal scribe Nash had too, because both
writers portray Touhy - though admittedly a crook - as never "really"
hurting anybody. Only doing what any down-to-earth bootlegger running a million
dollar/year criminal enterprise would have.
What Capone's Mob Murdered Roger
Touhy author John Tuohy does tho is, provide a more objective version of
events, balancing out Touhy's white wash ... 'er ... make that subjectively ...
remembered telling of his life & times. Author Tuohy's account of gangster
Touhy's account forced me - grown up now - to re-account for my own original
take on the story.
As a kid back then, Touhy seemed
almost a Robin Hood- ish hood - if you'll pardon a very lame pun. Forty years
on tho re-considering the evidence, I think a persuasive - if not iron-clad
convincing - case can be made for his conviction in the kidnapping of swindler
scumbag Jake the Barber Factor. At least as far as conspiracy to do so goes,
anyways. (Please excuse the crude redundancy there but Factor's stench truly
was that of the dog s*** one steps in on those unfortunate occasions one does.)
Touhy's memoir painted himself as
almost an innocent bystander at his own life's events. But he was a very smart
& savvy guy - no dummy by a long shot. And I kinda do believe now, to not
have known his own henchmen were in on Factor's ploy to stave off deportation
and imprisonment, Touhy would have had to be as naive a Prohibition crime boss
- and make no mistake he was one - as I was as a teenage kid reading Nash's
thug-opedia,
On the other hand, the guy was
the father of two sons and it's repulsive to consider he would have taken part
in loathsomeness the crime of kidnapping was - even if the abducted victim was an
adult and as repulsively loathsome as widows & orphans conman, Jake Factor.
This book's target audience is
crime buffs no doubt, but it's an interesting read just the same; and includes
anecdotes and insights I had not known of before. Unfortunately too, one that
knocks a hero of mine down a peg or two - or more like ten.
Circa 1960, President Kennedy
pardoned Jake the Barber, a fact that reading of almost made me puke. Then
again JFK and the Chicago Mob did make for some strange bedfellowery every now
& again. I'll always admire WWII US Navy commander Kennedy's astonishing
(word chosen carefully) bravery following his PT boat's sinking, but him
signing that document - effectively wiping Factor's s*** stain clean - as
payback for campaign contributions Factor made to him, was REALLY nauseating to
read.
Come to think of it tho, the
terms "criminal douchedog" & "any political candidate"
are pretty much interchangeable.
Anyways tho ... rest in peace
Rog, & I raise a toast - of virtual bootleg ale - in your honor:
"Turns out you weren't the hard-luck mug I'd thought you were, but what
the hell, at least you had style." And guts to meet your inevitable end
with more grace than a gangster should.
Post Note: Author Tuohy's
re-examination of the evidence in the Roger Touhy case does include some heroes
- guys & women - who attempted to find the truth of what did happen.
Reading about people like that IS rewarding. They showed true courage - and
decency - in a world reeking of corruption & deceit. So, here's to the lawyer
who took on a lost cause; the private detective who dug up buried facts; and
most of all, Touhy's wife & sister who stood by his side all those years.
Crime
don't pay, kids
Very good organized crime book. A
rather obscure gangster story which makes it fresh to read. I do not like these
minimum word requirements for a review. (There, I have met my minimum)
Chicago
Gangster History At It's Best
ByJ. CROSBYon
As a 4th generation Chicagoan, I
just loved this book. Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I heard the name
"Terrible Touhy's" mentioned many times. Roger was thought of as a
great man, and seems to have been held in high esteem among the old timer
Chicagoans.
That said, I thought this book to
be nothing but interesting and well written. (It inspired me to find a copy of
Roger's "Stolen Years" bio.) I do recommend this book to other folks
interested in prohibition/depression era Chicago crime research. It is a must
have for your library of Gangsters literature from that era. Chock full of
information and the reader is transported back in time.
I'd like to know just what is
"The Valley" area today in Chicago. I still live in the Windy City
and would like to see if anything remains from the early days of the 20th
century.
A good writer and a good book! I
will buy some more of Mr. Tuohy's work.
Great
story, great read
ByBookreaderon
A complex tale of gangsters,
political kickback, mob wars and
corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at a good pace. Highly recommend this book.
corrupt politicians told with wit and humor at a good pace. Highly recommend this book.
One
of the best books I've read in a long time....
If you're into mafioso, read
this! I loved it. Bought a copy for my brother to read for his birthday--good
stuff.
GUNS AND GLAMOUR
Capone. Torrio. Ricca. Giancana and
Accardo. The giant legends of organized crime that led the largest, wealthiest,
most powerful, and near completely documented organized crime syndicate in the
world. At the height of its power, the Chicago mobs influence extended from
Lake Shore Drive to the beaches of Havana, the neon lights of Vegas and the
heroin drenched back alleys of Hanoi. The years 1900 through 1959 are largely
considered the Golden Age for the Chicago mob. The end came with the accession
of Sam “Momo” Giancana to the criminal throne that Big Jim Colosimo had
founded. Flashy, arrogant and dangerous, Giancana’s rise to the leadership of
the Chicago Mob was paralleled by the federal government’s assault on organized
crime. By 1980, the Chicago mob has lost control of the organized labor on a
national basis and given up Las Vegas Las Vegas. Virtually every significant
Mafia Boss in the country was in jail or under indictment and Sam Giancana was
shot dead by his own men. The so-called Golden Age of Chicago Mob had ended.
Between 1900 and 1959, fifty-nine years, only seven Bosses led the Chicago Mob.
Between 1963 and 2000, thirty-seven years, there were more than nine Bosses in
rapid succession. All except one of them…the indomitable Tony Accardo…died in
jail or under federal and state indictment. While the Chicago Mob still wields
considerable criminal, financial, and political influence, it is a mere shadow
of what it once was. With increased pressure from far reaching RICO laws, the
constant surveillance of a well-informed and effective federal organized crime
task force and increased competition from equally ruthless and ambitious new
ethnic mobs, there is little chance it will ever reemerge as the awesome power
it once was.
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: I heard a lot about Chicago mafia and
I think it very interesting theme and I read few books but those books were so
hard to read (!): small font, a lot of slangs, hard spelling words! But John
Tuohy's book not like that!!! It's easy to read(and I'm not saying it written
poor or anything), what I mean is for the person who doesn't know much about
the mafia world this book is really helps to understand all the details, I
would say to see the whole picture!!! This book is really interesting and
helpful!
It also has a lot of photographs which
makes the book even better!
I wish there would be more writers like
John Tuohy who makes the books more interesting and cognitive!
Amazon review: Mr. Tuohy, has out done himself with
this prized piece of literary work! Since I'm a Chicagoan, born and raised for
40 years, some of them on the very same streets where some of the Outfit's
associates and higher-ups lived, and after the first few pages I'm hooked. His
writing style to me is very easy to digest, and his photos are spectacular,
either due to it's rarity or the person being photo, alot of these Outfit
bosses/hitman didn't like to be photographed, and believe me, they made sure
that you knew it. To take the Chicago Outfit and write about the ups and downs
the Organization went through during this 100 year time frame is an amazing
feat. You get some real good stories, written without an agenda, just to get
the information out to the public. A brilliant topic which was handled with
care and dignity by Mr.Tuohy, as I'm finding out is the case in ALL OF HIS
BOOKS, be they organized crime or based on something else. Get if a try, you'll
end up buying more than the one book, betcha you can't read just one!!!
An interesting book about the history
of the Chicago mob. It highlights the legends of the Chicago mob in the 1900s.
Any fan of the Chicago mob should add this to their collection.
The Mob and the Kennedy Assassination: Jack Ruby. Testimony by
Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files) Kindle
Edition
From the Inside Flap
The United States House of
Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in
1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther
King, Jr. and the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace. The Committee
investigated until 1978 and issued its final report, and ruled that Kennedy was
very likely assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. However, the Committee
noted that it believed that the conspiracy did not include the governments of
the Soviet Union or Cuba.
The Committee also stated it did not believe
the conspiracy was organized by any organized crime group, nor any anti-Castro
group, but that it could not rule out individual members of any of those groups
acting together.
The House Select Committee on
Assassinations suffered from being conducted mostly in secret, and then issued
a public report with much of its evidence sealed for 50 years under
Congressional rules.
In 1992, Congress passed legislation to
collect and open up all the evidence relating to Kennedy's death, and created
the Assassination Records Review Board to further that goal.
General conclusions
In particular, the various
investigations performed by the U.S. government were faulted for insufficient
consideration of the possibility of a conspiracy in each case. The Committee in
its report also made recommendations for legislative and administrative
improvements, including making some assassinations Federal crimes.
The Chief Counsel of the Committee
later changed his views that the CIA was being cooperative and forthcoming with
the investigation when he learned that the CIA's special liaison to the
Committee researchers, George Joannides, was actually involved with some of the
organizations that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with in the months leading up
to the assassination, including an anti-Castro group, the DRE, which was linked
to the CIA, where the liaison, Joannides, worked in 1963.
Chief Counsel Blakey later stated that
Joannides, instead, should have been interviewed by the Committee, rather than
serving as a gatekeeper to the CIA's evidence and files regarding the
assassination. He further disregarded and suspected all the CIA's statements
and representations to the Committee, accusing it of obstruction of justice.
Conclusions regarding the Kennedy
assassination
The HSCA concluded in its 1979 report
that:
1.Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at
Kennedy. The second and third shots he fired struck the President. The third
shot Oswald fired successfully killed the President.
2.Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a
high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President. Other
scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at
the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy
allegations.
3.The committee believes, on the basis of the
evidence available to it, that the President John F. Kennedy was probably
assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify
the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy. The committee believes, on
the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not
involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.
The committee believes, on the basis of
the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the
assassination of President Kennedy.
The committee believes, on the basis of
the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were
not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available
evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have
been involved.
The committee believes, on the basis of
the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime,
as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but
that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual
members may have been involved.
The committee believes, on the basis of the
evidence available to it, that the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of
Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the
assassination of President Kennedy.
4. Agencies and departments of the U.S.
Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfilment of
their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A
thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey
Oswald for the assassination was conducted. The investigation into the
possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions
of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion
that was too definitive.
The Committee further concluded that it
was probable that:
Four shots were fired. The third shot came
from a second assassin located on the grassy knoll, but missed. They concluded
that it missed due to the lack of physical evidence of an actual bullet, of
course this investigation took place almost sixteen years after the crime.
The HSCA agreed with the single bullet theory,
but concluded that it occurred at a time point during the assassination that
differed from any of the several time points the Warren Commission theorized it
occurred.
The Department of Justice, FBI, CIA,
and the Warren Commission were all criticized for not revealing to the Warren
Commission information available in 1964, and the Secret Service was deemed
deficient in their protection of the President.
The HSCA made several accusations of
deficiency against the FBI and CIA.
The accusations encompassed
organizational failures, miscommunication, and a desire to keep certain parts
of their operations secret. Furthermore, the Warren Commission expected these
agencies to be forthcoming with any information that would aid their
investigation. But the FBI and CIA only saw it as their duty to respond to
specific requests for information from the commission. However, the HSCA found
the FBI and CIA were deficient in performing even that limited role.
In 2003, Robert Blakey, staff director
and chief counsel for the Committee, issued a statement on the Central
Intelligence Agency:
...I no longer believe that we were
able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence]
Agency and its relationship to Oswald.... We now know that the Agency withheld
from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the
commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its
investigation. The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to
obtain the full truth, which will now never be known. Significantly, the Warren
Commission's conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it
is, in retrospect, not the truth. We also now know that the Agency set up a
process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the
committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the
Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication
and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of
story. I am now in that camp.
The Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings. Abridged.
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: Senator Kefauver is a great person!
The committee did a amazingly great job investigating organized crime in
different cities, the same as the author did putting it all together in one
book!!It was really interesting to read this record! I felt like I was there in
a court room! Seriously, very impressive!
Amazon review: It's great that we have such a great
historical document in print! Senator Kefauver and the committee investigate
Organized Crime all over the country: Miami, NY, New Orleans, Philadelphia,
Kansas city, etc. This record
has many interviews with mafia leaders.
Rare and great photographs! It's one of the best criminal books I ever read! I
would highly recommend it to anyone!
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: "Shooting the Mob: Organized
Crime in photos, Crime Boss Tony Accardo" was a welcomed addition to my
book collection. For one thing, not much is written about ,"the Big
Tuna", Tony Accardo; the Chicago Outfit's "man of many talents",
let alone any photos. This book gives the reader a chance to gain some
knowledge on the amazing Outfit boss/consigliere, that might not otherwise be
available.
For me, it was a must for my
collection; not to give too much away, but there are photos and personal
information about the life and times of Anthony "JB" Accardo; from
his days hanging around the "Circus Cafe" with "Tough" Tony
Capezio, John "Screwey" Moore and "Machine Gun" Jack
McGurn, to catching "the Big Guy's",attention, "Snorky" who
then had him sitting in the lobby of his hotels with a Thompson Sub-Machine Gun
on guard duty!
Things just kept getting better for the
capable "Joe Batters"!!
Mob Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo
Lonardo and others: The court testimony of FBI New York Undercover Agent Joe
Pistone
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: What I loved about this book is that
even though its mostly testimony before government investigative inquires, you
can sense the hood attitudes and their arrogance. This is the real mob talking
about everyday life as a gangster. Good stuff
Amazon review: This is the story of gangland told in
the federal testimony of the hoodlum who decided to talk about life in the
underworld. Although some Chicago gangsters are included in the text and photos
(Lots of photos here) the concentration is on the New York mob.
An Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time
Line. 1837-2000
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: Love the pictures in the book, some
of them I've not seen before. This is a good outline for what one needs to know
about the rise and fall of what was once a mighty underworld mob.
Amazon review: Pretty good outline in photos and
text of the Chicago Outfit from start to what is basically its finish, the last
year of the 20th century.
The New England Mafia.
Amazon review: Good book about the New England mafia
with some nice rare pictures
Amazon review: Coming from RI - The book was great
Amazon review: This held my interest, read it in two
sittings, quite late at night. Most of the main characters were familiar to me,
being a born and bred New Englander, got a kick out of some of the
descriptions. A good easy read with lots of history and Mafia insight.
Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos Paperback –
December 20, 2011
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: This is a funny book, okay a little
bloody in places but believe it or not, the recipes are actually pretty good
and there are several good stories about mobsters and meals. The mob stories
are mixed with authentic Italian recipes and other Outfit anecdotes and all of
it makes for fun reading and actually some pretty good cooking.(Including the
meat sauce recipe from the prison scene in "Gooodfellas") Most of the
recipes are very simple fare, quick to make and include classic dishes like
Shrimp Scampi, a simple Tomato Sauce, Veal Piccata, Asparagus with Prosciutto,
Baked Stuffed Clams, Veal Chops Milanese, Caponata and Lobster. The book has
about 50 something photos of dead mobsters followed by a recipe. The bloody
scenes aside, this book would make compliment most cooking libraries and will
works especially well for the novice cook.
Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine's
Day Massacre. Paperback – December 7, 2011
by Shadrach Bond
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: A detailed photographic account of
the murders that shocked the underworld, the St. Valentine's Day massacre. The
author tells the story of what happened and how it happened on that fateful day
for the Northside gang and demonstrates with photos. Good book.
Shooting the Mob: Organized Crime in Photographs. Dutch Schultz.
Paperback – May 4, 2012
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: Dutch Schultz continues to capture
and fascinate and his story, including his last words, are detailed here with
dozens of photographs from Schultz early days in crime until the bitter end.
Amazon review: Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer)
was the problem child of organized crime in New York City in the 1920s and
1930s who made his fortune in bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket. The
book gives a quick but accurate account of the Dutchman's rise and his battle
in two tax evasions trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey. It covers his
murder, probably on the orders of fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an effort to
avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill
Dewey, which they declined. After Schultz disobeyed the Commission and
attempted to carry out the hit, they ordered his assassination in 1935. The
book has a very fine series of photographs. Good reading at a fair price.
Shooting the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters,
Gangsters and Hoods.
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: This book covers the full gamut of
gangsters with many excellent photos. The story accompanying each slain hoodlum
varies from a few pages to one or two lines. The book suffers from atrocious
editing of the text. Words are frequently mispelled or missing, sentences often
end half way through only to resume as a new sentence and paragraphs sometimes
end midsentence. There are also no sources for anything. If not for this, the
book would have received five stars.
Amazon review: There is no shortage of corpses in
this book. Its page after page of dead hoodlums from the underworld with a
passage on how they got that way and by whom. Gory but I must say, fascinating
as the violence of the underworld so often is. The book is a guilty pleasure.
The Salerno Report. The Mafia and the Murder of President John F.
Kennedy: The report by Mafia expert Ralph Salerno Consultant to the Select Committee on Assassinations
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: A must read for anyone studying the
Kennedy assassination. Among the many conspiracy theories is the possible
involvement of Mafia. As we all know there are no definite conclusions, and
history may never resolve the issue, but this report is engaging and captive
reading.
Amazon review: The Salerno Report is far more accurate
than the Warren Report
Amazon review: Evidence mounted in a certain
direction. The truth is still discoverable, and this ghastly event in our
history deserves still more examination. This book contributes to the eventual
revelation of what really happened.
Rosenthal murder case
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
"The old Metropole. The old
Metropole," brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. "Filled with faces dead
and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so long as I
live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at the table,
and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the
waiter came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him
outside. 'all right,' says Rosy, and
begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair. "'Let the bastards
in here if they want you, Rosy, but don't you, so help me, move outside this
room.' "It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd of raised the
blinds we'd of seen daylight."
"Did he go?" I asked
innocently.
'Sure he went." Mr. Wolfshiem's
nose flashed at me indignantly. "He turned around in the door and says:
'Don't let that waiter take away my coffee!' Then he went out on the sidewalk,
and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away."
"Four of them were
electrocuted,"
I said, remembering. "Five, with
Becker"
The Great Gatsby
Amazon review: The Becker-Rosenthal trial was a 1912
trial for the murder of Herman Rosenthal by Charles Becker and members of the
Lenox Avenue Gang. The trial ran from October 7, 1912 to October 30, 1912 and
restarted on May 2, 1914 to May 22, 1914. Other procedural events took place in
1915.
In July 1912, Lieutenant Charles Becker was
named in the New York World as one of three senior police officials involved in
the case of Herman Rosenthal, a small time bookmaker who had complained to the
press that his illegal casinos had been badly damaged by the greed of Becker
and his associates. On July 16, two days after the story appeared, Rosenthal
walked out of the Hotel Metropole at 147 West 43rd Street, just off Times
Square. He was gunned down by a crew of Jewish gangsters from the Lower East
Side, Manhattan. In the aftermath, Manhattan District Attorney Charles S.
Whitman, who had made an appointment with Rosenthal before his death, made no
secret of his belief that the gangsters had committed the murder at Charles
Becker's behest.
At first, John J. Reisler, also known as
"John the barber," told the police that he'd seen "Bridgey"
Webber running away from the crime scene directly following the killing. He
recanted under duress from gangsters the next week, and was charged with
perjury.
The investigation was covered on the front
page of the New York Times for months. It was so complex that the NYPD recalled
thirty retired detectives to help investigate; they were said "to know
most of the gangsters."
One of these old-timers, Detective
Upton, formerly of the NYPD "Italian Squad," was instrumental in the
July 25, 1912, arrest of "Dago" Frank Cirofici, one of the suspected
killers. He and his companion, Regina Gorden (formerly known as "Rose
Harris"), were "so stupefied by opium that they offered no objection
to their arrests," according to the New York Times.
Joe Petrosino
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Review: Any book about Joe Petrosino can't be
all bad. Far too little attention is paid to Petrosino these days. The foolish
Public remembers names of scumbags like Capone, Gotti, Valachi, Tony Soprano,
etc. Far too few people remember New York Cop Joe Petrosino. In a time when
Italians were segregated, harassed by Cops and treated as second class
citizens, Petrosino arose as the first Italian anti-gangster Cop. Then, as now,
gangsters claimed they were the victims of prejudice, discrimination and
profiling. Petrosino rose above his times to become a Pioneer in anti-Mafia
police work. Tough as nails, un-corruptible, and utterly fearless, Petrosino
was assassinated by the Mafia in their usual cowardly style.
Review: This book is a welcome bit of
scholarship on the great Petrosino. Tuohy's book does contain an, apparent,
misprint. There is a lone word, without authority, regarding Petrosino being
"corrupt," perhaps a reference to his tough police tactics.
Corruption, however, implies a personal power or profit motive. Tuohy provides
no evidence or argument of any such motive or activity on Petrosino's part. On
the contrary, the only evidence is that Petrosino was a good, honest Cop.
Petrosino is a role model for young and old alike, oppressed immigrants, and
even whining minority gangsters and their sympathizers, such as Sharpton,
Obama, Jackson, and Holder.
Review: I have several books from The Mob
Files Series and I have really enjoyed reading them. The Joe Petrosino story is
definitely one worth reading. He had an interesting life working against the
mafia. I enjoyed seeing the pictures in the book and they helped bring the
story to life.
HERE'S MY
LATEST BOOKS.....
This is a book of short stories taken from
the things I saw and heard in my childhood in the factory town of Ansonia in
southwestern Connecticut.
Most of these stories, or as true as I recall
them because I witnessed these events many years ago through the eyes of child
and are retold to you now with the pen and hindsight of an older man. The only
exception is the story Beat Time which is based on the
disappearance of Beat poet Lew Welch. Decades before I knew who Welch was, I
was told that he had made his from California to New Haven, Connecticut, where
was an alcoholic living in a mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it
away but never forgot it.
The collected stories are loosely modeled
around Joyce’s novel, Dubliners (I also borrowed from the
novels character and place names. Ivy Day, my character in “Local Orphan is
Hero” is also the name of chapter in Dubliners, etc.) and like
Joyce I wanted to write about my people, the people I knew as a child, the
working class in small town America and I wanted to give a complete view of
them as well. As a result the stories are about the divorced, Gays, black
people, the working poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the
contented and the discontented.
Conversely many of the stories in this book
are about starting life over again as a result of suicide (The Hanging
Party, Small Town Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a near death experience (Anna
Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A Brief Summer) and natural
occurring death. (The Best Laid Plans, The Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)
With the exception of Jesus Loves
Shaqunda, in each story there is a rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is
reported as having died of pneumonia in The Winter Years)
Sal, the desperate and depressed divorcee
in Things Change, changes his life in Lunch Hour when
asks the waitress for a date and she accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time,
the last story in the book) In The Arranged Time, Thisby is given
the option of change and whether she takes it or, we don’t know. The death of
Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has led her to the diner
and into the waiting arms of the outgoing and loveable Gabe.
Although the book is based on three sets of
time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the diner is opened in the early morning
and closed at night, time stands still inside the Diner. The hour on the big
clock on the wall never changes time and much like my memories of that place,
everything remains the same.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Small-William-Tuohy/dp/1517270456/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444164878&sr=1-1&keywords=short+stories+from+a+small+town
REVIEWS FOR "SHORT STORIES FROM A SMALL
TOWN"
The
Valley Lives
By Marion Marchetto, author of The
Bridgewater Chronicles on October 15, 2015
Short Stores from a Small Town is set in The
Valley (known to outsiders as The Lower Naugatuck Valley) in Connecticut. While
the short stories are contemporary they provide insight into the timeless
qualities of an Industrial Era community and the values and morals of the
people who live there. Some are first or second generation Americans, some are
transplants, yet each takes on the mantle of Valleyite and wears it proudly. It
isn't easy for an author to take the reader on a journey down memory lane and
involve the reader in the life stories of a group of seemingly unrelated
characters. I say seemingly because by book's end the reader will realize that
he/she has done more than meet a group of loosely related characters.
We meet all of the characters during a
one-day time period as each of them finds their way to the Valley Diner on a
rainy autumn day. From our first meeting with Angel, the educationally
challenged man who opens and closes the diner, to our farewell for the day to
the young waitress whose smile hides her despair we meet a cross section of the
Valley population. Rich, poor, ambitious, and not so ambitious, each life
proves that there is more to it beneath the surface. And the one thing that
binds these lives together is The Valley itself. Not so much a place (or a
memory) but an almost palpable living thing that becomes a part of its
inhabitants.
Let me be the first the congratulate author
John William Tuohy on a job well done. He has evoked the heart of The Valley
and in doing so brought to life the fabric that Valleyites wear as a mantle of
pride. While set in a specific region of the country, the stories that unfold
within the pages of this slim volume are similar to those that live in many a
small town from coast to coast.
By Sandra Mendyk
Just read "Short Stories from a Small
Town," and couldn't put it down! Like Mr. Tuohy's other books I read, they
keep your interest, especially if you're from a small town and can relate to
the lives of the people he writes about. I recommend this book for anyone
interested in human interest stories. His characters all have a central place
where the stories take place--a diner--and come from different walks of life
and wrestle with different problems of everyday life. Enjoyable and thoughtful.
I loved how the author wrote about "his
people"
By kathee
A touching thoughtful book. I loved how the
author wrote about "his people", the people he knew as a child from
his town. It is based on sets of time in the local diner, breakfast , lunch and
dinner, but time stands still ... Highly recommend !
WONDERFUL book, I loved it!
By John M. Cribbins
What wonderful stories...I just loved this
book.... It is great how it is written following, breakfast, lunch, dinner, at
a diner. Great characters.... I just loved it....
EMERSON
Amazon review: I purchased this book for my daughter
who loves Emerson. The quotes are organized in categories and are easy to find
and read. The book includes the most memorable quotes of Emerson and my
daughter loves it.
Amazon review: This is really enjoyable to read and
I like how it is done and you can look up all sorts of things. I have shared
some of Emerson's quotes from this book on my website right from this book,
giving him credit.
Amazon review: Made me hungry for more!!
Amazon review: It's a keeper!
CYBERDATE
An award winning full length
play.
"Cyberdate.Com
is the story of six ordinary people in search of romance, friendship and love
and find it in very extraordinary ways. Based on the real life experiences of
the authors misadventures with on line dating, Cyber date is a bittersweet
story that will make you laugh, cry and want to fall in love again."
Ellis McKay
Cyberdate.Com,
was chosen for a public at the Actors Chapel in Manhattan in February of 2007
as part of the groups Reading Series for New York project. In June of 2008, the
play won the Virginia Theater of The First Amendment Award for best new play.
The play was also given a full reading at The Frederick Playhouse in Maryland
in March of 2007.
MY
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AVAILABLE NOW
AMAZON REVIEWS
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered
Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next
ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state
schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep
River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the
same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny
compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to
overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
By Dr. Wm. Anthony Connolly
This
incredible memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye, tells of entertaining angels,
dancing with devils, and of the abandoned children many viewed simply as
raining manna from some lesser god.
The young
and unfortunate lives of the Tuohy bruins—sometimes Irish, sometimes Jewish,
often Catholic, rambunctious, but all imbued with Lion’s hearts—told here with
brutal honesty leavened with humor and laudable introspective forgiveness. The
memoir will have you falling to your knees thanking that benevolent Irish cop
in the sky, your lucky stars, or hugging the oxygen out of your own kids the
fate foisted upon Johnny and his siblings does not and did not befall your own
brood. John William Tuohy, a nationally-recognized authority on organized crime
and Irish levity, is your trusted guide through the weeds the decades of
neglect ensnared he and his brothers and sisters, all suffering for the
impersonal and often mercenary taint of the foster care system. Theirs, and
Tuohy’s, story is not at all figures of speech as this review might suggest,
but all too real and all too sad, and maddening. I wanted to scream. I wanted
to get into a time machine, go back and adopt every last one of them. I was
angry. I was captivated. The requisite damning verities of foster care are all
here, regretfully, but what sets this story above others is its beating heart,
even a bruised and broken one, still willing to forgive and understand, and
continue to aid its walking wounded. I cannot recommend this book enough.
By
jackieh on October 13, 2015
After reading about John's deeply
personal and painful past, I just wanted to hug the child within him......and
hug all the children who were thrown into the state's foster system....it is an
amazing read.......
By
Jane Pogoda on October 9, 2015
I truly enjoyed reading his
memoir. I also grew up in Ansonia and had no idea conditions such as these
existed. The saving grace is knowing the author made it out and survived the
system. Just knowing he was able to have a family of his own made me happy. I
attended the same grammar school and was happy that his experience there was
not negative. I had a wonderful experience in that school. I wish that I could
have been there for him when he was at the school since we were there at
probably at the same time.
By
Sue on September 27, 2015
Hi - just finished your novel
"No time to say goodbye" - what a powerful read!!! - I bought it for
my 90 year old mom who is an avid reader and lived in the valley all her
life-she loved it also along with my sister- we are all born and raised in the
valley- i.e. Derby and Ansonia
By
David A. Wright on September 7, 2015
I enjoyed this book. I grew up in
Ansonia CT and went to the Assumption School. Also reconized all the places he
was talking about and some of the families.
By
Robert G Manley on September 7, 2015
This is a wonderfully written
book. It is heart wrenchingly sad at times and the next minute hilariously
funny. I attribute that to the intelligence and wit of the author who combines
the humor and pathos of his Irish catholic background and horrendous
"foster kid" experience. He captures each character perfectly and the
reader can easily visualize the individuals the author has to deal with on daily
basis. Having lived part of my life in the parochial school system and having
lived as a child in the same neighborhood as the author, I was vividly brought
back to my childhood .Most importantly, it shows the strength of the soul and
how just a little compassion can be so important to a lost child.
By
LNA on July 9, 2015
John Tuohy writes with compelling
honesty, and warmth. I grew up in Ansonia, CT myself, so it makes it even more
real. He brings me immediately back there with his narrative, while he wounds
my soul, as I realize I had no idea of the suffering of some of the children
around me. His story is a must read, of courage and great spirit in the face of
impoverishment, sorrow, and adult neglect. I could go on and on, but just get
the book. If you're like me, you'll soon be reading it out loud to any person
in the room who will listen. Many can suffer and overcome as they go through
it, but few can find the words that take us through the story. John is a gifted
writer to be able to do that.
By
Barbara Pietruszka on June 29, 2015
I am from Connecticut so I was
very familiar with many locations described in the book especially Ansonia
where I lived. I totally enjoyed the book and would like to know more about the
author. I recommend the book to everyone
By
Joanne B. on June 28, 2015
What an emotional rollercoaster.
I laughed. I cried. Once you start reading it's hard to stop. I was torn
between wanting to gulp it up and read over and over each quote that started
the chapter. I couldn't help but feel part of the Tuohy clan. I wanted to
scream in their defense. It's truly hard to believe the challenges that foster
children face. I can only pray that this story may touch even one person facing
this life. It's an inspiring read. That will linger long after you finish it.
This is a wonderfully written memoir that immediately pulls you in to the lives
of the Tuohy family.
By
Paul Day on June 15, 2015
Great reading. Life in foster
care told from a very rare point of view.
By
Jackie Malkes on June 5, 2015
This book is definitely a must
for social workers working with children specifically. This is an excellent
memoir which identifies the trails of foster children in the 1960s in the
United States. The memoir captures stories of joy as well as nail biting terror,
as the family is at times torn apart but finds each other later and finds
solace in the experiences of one another. The stories capture the love siblings
have for one another as well as the protection they have for one another in
even the worst of circumstances. On the flip side, one of the most touching
stories to me was when a Nun at the school helped him to read-- truly an
example of how a positive person really helped to shape the author in times
when circumstances at home were challenging and treacherous. I found the book
to be a page turner and at times show how even in the hardest of circumstances
there was a need to live and survive and make the best of any moment. The
memoir is eye-opening and helped to shed light and make me feel proud of the volunteer
work I take part in with disadvantaged children. Riveting....Must
read....memory lane on steroids....Catholic school banter, blue color
towns...Lawrence Welk on Sundays night's.
By
Eileen on June 4, 2015
From ' No time to say Goodbye
'and authors John W. Touhys Gangster novels, his style never waivers...humorous
to sadness to candidly realistic situations all his writings leaves the reader
in awe......longing for more.
By
karen pojakene on June 1, 2015
This book is a must-read for
anyone who administers to the foster care program in any state. This is not a
"fell through the cracks" life story, but rather a memoir of a life
guided by strength and faith and a hard determination to survive. it is
heartening to know that the "sewer" that life can become to steal our
personal peace can be fought and our peace can be restored, scarred, but
restored.
By
Michelle Black on
A captivating, shocking, and
deeply moving memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye is a true page turner. John shares
the story of his childhood, from the struggles of living in poverty to being in
the foster care system and simply trying to survive. You will be cheering for
him all the way, as he never loses his will to thrive even in the darkest and
bleakest of circumstances. This memoir is a very truthful and unapologetic
glimpse into the way in which some of our most vulnerable citizens have been
treated in the past and are still being treated today. It is truly eye-opening,
and hopefully will inspire many people to take action in protection of
vulnerable children.
By
Kimberly on May 24, 2015
I found myself in tears while
reading this book. John William Tuohy writes quite movingly about the world he
grew up in; a world in which I had hoped did not exist within the foster care
system. This book is at times funny, raw, compelling, heartbreaking and
disturbing. I found myself rooting for John as he tries to escape from an
incredibly difficult life. You will too!
By
Geoffrey A. Childs on May 20, 2015
I found this book to be a
compelling story of life in the Ct foster care system. at times disturbing and
at others inspirational ,The author goes into great detail in this gritty
memoir of His early life being abandoned into the states system and his
subsequent escape from it. Every once in a while a book or even an article in a
newspaper comes along that bears witness to an injustice or even something
that's just plain wrong. This chronicle of the foster care system is such a
book and should be required reading for any aspiring social workers.
Baby Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
READERS REVIEWS FROM
AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: There are more intense books that go
into supposed motivation and recording techniques and equipment, but this is a
lovely work that illuminates the songs and the stories behind them without
being overbearing in doing so. I really enjoyed it - bought several copies to
give as gifts. Well done!
The Connecticut Irish
READERS REVIEWS FROM AMAZON BOOKS
Amazon review: This book is not a history of the
Irish in Connecticut so much as it is a history of people of Irish decent of
the great State of Connecticut, but in that, it does a very good job reporting
the facts and being wholly inclusive. It has presents dome very wonderful
photographs and fives a brief but disturbing picture of the Anti-Irish movement
in the New England states.
BLOGLAPEDIA’S BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A
really small company run by writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The
Day Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND
CIVILIZATIONS
The
Works of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young
children. By consent of the author, this play may be performed, at no charge,
by educational institutions, neighborhood organizations and other
not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an
American treasure and this little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens
to be very small, by pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the
pumpkin patch on Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance
to prove that just because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here
is the point that I found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size
doesn't matter when it comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I
think children need to hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is
a ongoing lesson isn't it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
It's
Not All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the
books contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age
seven through seventeen, in foster care.
Over the course of those ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and
concerned people told me, "It's okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good
people meant to encourage me, and I appreciated their kindness then, and all
these many decades later, I still appreciate their good intentions. But as I
was tossed around the foster care system, it began to dawn on me that they were
wrong. It was not all right to be a
foster kid.
During my time in the system, I
was bounced every eighteen months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a
boy's school and to a group home before I left on my own accord at age
seventeen.
In the course of my stay in
foster care, I was severely beaten in two homes by my "care givers"
and separated from my four siblings who were also in care, sometimes only
blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to
wait to age out, although the effects of leaving the system without any family,
means, or safety net of any kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived
in poverty for the first part of my life, dropped out of high school, and had
continuous problems with the law.
Today, almost nothing about foster care has
changed. Exactly what happened to me is
happening to some other child, somewhere in America, right now. The system, corrupt, bloated, and
inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a
system that was originally a compassionate social policy built to improve lives
but is now a definitive cause in ruining lives.
Due to gross negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what
the foster care system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care
has become our epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have
lived through it.
Yet there is a suspicion among
some Americans that foster care costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and
is at odds with a satisfying life.
Others see foster care as a part of the welfare system, as legal plunder
of the public treasuries.
None of that is true; in fact, all that sort
of thinking does is to blame the victims.
There is not a single child in the system who wants to be there or asked
to be there. Foster kids are in foster
care because they had nowhere else to go.
It's that simple. And believe me,
if those kids could get out of the system and be reunited with their parents
and lead normal, healthy lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of
legal plunder of the public treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are
doing the plundering.
We need to end this needless suffering. We need to end it because it is morally and
ethically wrong and because the generations to come will not judge us on the
might of our armed forces or our technological advancements or on our fabulous
wealth.
Rather, they will judge us, I am certain, on
our compassion for those who are friendless, on our decency to those who have
nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to make our nation and our world
a better place. And if we cannot
accomplish those things in the short time allotted to us, then let them say of
us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of
foster care and here's how to do it. We
have created this book so that almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to
the world. You have the power to improve
the lives of those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people, as good, decent and
generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster care, in their name and
with their money, they would stop it.
But, generally speaking, although the public has a vague notion that
foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete picture. They are not aware
of the human, economic and social cost that the mismanagement of the foster
care system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in
this work, you can help to change all of that.
You can make a difference. You
can change things for the better.
We can always change the future
for a foster kid; to make it better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up
(or tweet out) because it's your country.
Don't depend on the "The other guy" to speak up for these
kids, because you are the other guy.
We cannot build a future for
foster children, but we can build foster children for the future and the time
to start that change is today.
No
time to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster
Paperbook 440 Books
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir
BOOKS
ABOUT FILM
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS
ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR
BOOKS
The
Book of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people
The
Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises
http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS
ABOUT THE 1960s
You
Don’t Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969
Paperback 122 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969
Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/
Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s
IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/
The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/
The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/
The
Wee Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words
http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/
Everything
you need to know about St. Patrick
Paperback 26 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick
A
Reading Book in Ancient Irish History
Paperback 147pages
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History
The
Book of Things Irish
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets
and Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The
New England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The
Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The
Life of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What
they Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The
Mob Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The
Mob Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The
Life and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las Vegas Organized Crime
The
Mob in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The
Life and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The
Mob, Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When
Capone’s Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The
Bioff Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The
New York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The
New York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The
Russian Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized Crime/General
Best
of Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best
of Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More
Mob Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The
New England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill
each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The
Mob across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The
US Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Book of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The
Mob and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The
Last Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four
More Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High
and Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The
Seven Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT
OF CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The
words of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet,
and writer was born on January 6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in
what was then part of Ottoman Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In
1895, the family immigrated to the United States when Kahlil was a young man
and settled in South Boston. Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a
member of the avant-garde community and became especially close to Boston
artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and
supported Gibran’s creative projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and
watercolor, Kahlil attended art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a
symbolist and romantic style. He held his first art exhibition of his drawings
in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met
Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who ten years his senior. The two formed an important
friendship and love affair that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell
influenced every aspect of Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his
editor when he began to write and ushered his first book into publication in
1918, The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical
cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran died in New York City on
April 10, 1931, at the age of 48 from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The
Art of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander