I grew up in the Old Colony housing project in South Boston and became partners with James "Whitey" Bulger, who I always called Jimmy.
Jimmy and I, we were unstoppable. We took what we wanted. And we made people disappear—permanently. We made millions. And if someone ratted us out, we killed him. We were not nice guys.
I found out that Jimmy had been an FBI informant in 1999, and my life was never the same. When the feds finally got me, I was faced with something Jimmy would have killed me for—cooperating with the authorities. I pled guilty to twenty-nine counts, including five murders. I went away for five and a half years.
I was brutally honest on the witness stand, and this book is brutally honest, too; the brutal truth that was never before told. How could it? Only three people could tell the true story. With one on the run and one in jail for life, it falls on me.
About this product: Contrary to the first reviewer, I find the subject matter of this book ingenious. If the subject of race (and gender) is old and overdone, then why are black males wrongly accused on a daily basis of committing crimes they didn't commit? Why the constant suspicion of those who are different from us?
Even more important than the subject matter is the fact that this invisible, even non-existent, man's voice is convincingly and beautifully rendered. By writing about a man whom no one understands, who is conjured up at will from the darkest regions of white America's consciousness, I, as a white woman am able to relate on a visceral level, to recognize my own blindness and knee-jerk reactions, and also to identify with the character who has been marginalized.
This book is amazing for its refusal to judge evil. Instead of offering solutions, Eady gives us the opportunity to become other people, to live their lives and their truths. By the end of the book, my world seems a much bigger place than it did before I started reading.
About this product: During the 1960s a new breed of "poverty lawyers"-in collaboration with welfare recipient activists-mounted a legal campaign to create a constitutional right to welfare. The collaboration worked significant changes in the social welfare system of the United States and in the scope of individual constitutional rights. In this first in-depth account, Martha F. Davis tells the behind-the-scenes story of the strategies, successes, failures, and frustrations of that important campaign.
About this product: There is nothing pretty or clean about brawling. It hurts, its frightening, its brutal and its ugly. If you accept the fact that all fighting is dirty all the time, then you must take advantage of every dirty trick you can muster. Thats where this book comes in.
The ripping, poking, pinching and pressing techniques in this book emphasize quick, vicious delivery to the eyes, throat, ears, groin, nerve points and other acutely vulnerable targets on the human body. They range from annoying (to distract an attacker while you set up other moves) to devastatingly destructive, when there are no other options but to cause intense pain and potential injury. The criteria for their inclusion are that they must be simple, they must hurt and they must work in close-in fighting.
No streetfighting education is complete without the arsenal of nasty tricks in this book.
Pontius Pilate is cursed to be a vampire. Life after life after life.
PILATE is a drug lord vampire in this re-telling of Christ's final days. When given yet another chance to save the Earth's latest Christ, will the re-incarnated Pilate choose to protect Her? Or, will he wash his hands once again? Be warned: The Harbor is wicked. The violence is graphic. The sex is brutal and the terror is palpable. PILATE is not your parents' bible story....
About this product: Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. In "Alcatraz," we meet a middle-school spelling champion who spends her afternoons taking baths with the boy next door. In "Almonds and Cherries," a young woman turns an unexpectedly arousing bra-shopping experience into a short film, with ramifications for everyone around her. In "On the Occasion of My Ruination," a college-bound student plots to lose her virginity to a pizza parlor waiter. The Brutal Language of Love challenges traditional notions of right and wrong with what has become Erian's signature -- an achingly stylish humor and a deep understanding of the brutal truth about human nature. These surprising, provocative, and deeply resonant stories marked the emergence of a major talent
“Schneider’s thorough research and vivid writing create a fast-paced, moving story, one that is difficult to believe and impossible to forget.” —The New York Times Book Review A gripping survival epic, Brutal Journey tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors, bound for glory, who landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and some five thousand miles later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortes’s gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors brought nothing back other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive.
About this product: Human beings are nature's top predator. Whether inventing umbrellas to control the effects of nature or bombing nations to subdue them, we never stop seeking control. Even driving your car presents a series of roving battles and negotiations to control and defend your space, the essence of politics. Even if you prefer to live in denial and tell yourself you are above it all, you will not get far in life without learning how to deal with those who are not.
Inspired by the famed sixteenth century philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, The Politics of Life offers 25 pithy rules for surviving the politics of everyday life. The rules will at times seem harsh and cruel, perhaps even immoral. But that is what comes with the turf when you are learning to deal with others as they actually behave, not how you imagine them!
About this product: The 73-year life span of Yugoslavia roughly coincides with what historians have called "the short 20th century," from the onset of World War I to the end of the cold war. It was always a tenuously constructed nation, and when it finally collapsed, Roger Cohen was there, dutifully filing reports for the New York Times. In Hearts Grown Brutal, he adds depth and personal drama to the stories of civil war and ethnicide, and he points an accusing finger at the Western nations who put the lie to any notion of a "new world order" by offering only half-hearted challenges to Serbian aggression until nearly 250,000 innocents had died and 2.7 million civilians had been driven from their homes.
Cohen, like many Western analysts, observes that the clash between Muslim Bosnians, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs had been in the making for hundreds of years. But he locates the origins of the recent "collective madness"--as one Serbian leader called it--in World War II, when Croatia sided with the Nazis and when Serbia took the opportunity of the German invasion to settle old scores against Croats, Muslims, Jews, and Gypsies. Ordinary men and women of Yugoslavia committed extraordinary acts of inhumanity against one another during the war against Hitler. Post-Communist civil war gave them license to hate one another anew: when Serbia struck out at Bosnia and Croatia, all three nations fell into a frenzy of slaughter whose repercussions will be felt for generations to come. Hearts Grown Brutal is a somber, horrifying indictment of all involved that stands as an essential work of contemporary history. --Gregory McNamee
About this product: It has been called the Appalachian Dahlia, mostly because it closely parallels another famous homicide that took place years later in Hollywood. Over seventy-five years ago, in the cradle of southern West Virginia's most rugged mountain range, a bizarre and grisly murder grabbed national headlines due to the peculiar circumstances surrounding the senseless homicide. Now, a book - a new revision offering greater detail and newly discovered information - takes another look at a puzzling true account, which involved a number of white-collar suspects, an intense community scandal and a shocking gangland-style execution that still baffles the public. This is a full re-write and revision of a former literary hit, The Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman. The book represents the first in-depth work concerning socialite Mamie Thurman and her inexplicable, gruesome murder back in 1932. It includes a new investigation and several all-new chapters in the murder case. Mamie was savagely destroyed on a rainy night in June: shot in the head; neck fractured; face disfigured; throat cut; and her lifeless corpse dumped over a mountainside, like garbage at an illegal dump site. According to Bill Clements, of Quarrier Press, "This new work is a complete reconsideration of its predecessor. It includes much more research and interview material than its former release. The author grabs the reader's attention from the onset. It's part crime drama, part roller coaster ride, and most amazing of all, this is a true story." It is a terribly immoral and violent report from the heart of the Bible belt, during teh final year of Prohibition. And since 1932, the story has taken on urban legend status, where there are now claims of ghostly sightings and other weird occurrences that only add to this fantastic story.
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