This book is about Carmine "Sonny Pinto" DiBiase, a hitman for the Colombo Family. He began his criminal career as an adolescent, getting into all manner of shenanagins. He eventually was made in the Genovese Family, though many sources claim he worked with the Colombo Family. He supposedly trafficked heroin, ran an illegal card game, Several members of organized crime families had plenty to say about his temperament, especially when he was drinking. It is believed that he was responsible for the deaths of Ali Waffa, Michael Granello, Joseph Viscone, and "Crazy Joe" Gallo. Gallo was murdered at Umberto's Clam House on April 1, 1972 by four gunmen. Carmine DiBiase was one of those gunmen.

This book is currently available to listen to on Audible Plus with your membership. I forget exactly how many hours this was, but it wasn't exceptionally long, and I listened to most of it while doing housework. I thought the book was really quite good. I always enjoy a book about organized crime. This particular time period in organized crime was full of hits and backstabbing. This book contained a lot of information about some of the more famous names to come out of organized crime, and goes into detail about why a hit was done on Crazy Joe Gallo. If you are into organized crime, you may want to give this one a listen. 

 A good portion of this book speaks about the addiction crisis in the Appalachian region. I currently live in the Lower Appalachian region, and I can certainly testify to there being a massive opioid issue here. (And also meth...a whole lot of meth.) There are many reasons people use drugs, and I have no business judging anyone for that. It is sad that people were given drugs for legitimate reasons, and people got addicted. Addiction can absolutely ruin the lives of everyone it touches, and it is really tragic that this is such a prevalent issue in modern society.

Another interesting point this book made was about the Purdue Pharma company, which was owned by the Sackler family. The family has often been lauded for their philanthropy. They have donated an exceptional amount of money to the arts, however, that money was generated at a great cost. Obviously, pain medication is necessary for various things, but the fact that the level of addictiveness was not accurately represented is really shameful. So many doctors pushed these drugs without realizing or caring about what would happen to their patients. This has snowballed into a whole lot of problems, such as doctor shopping, illegal drug transactions, addiction, and death via overdose/accidents related to use. I think the fate of Purdue Pharma and the backlash that the Sackler family endured was a small justice compared to the cost in lives ruined due to their deliberate misleading and pushing of these drugs.

This book was not on my list of selected books for my reading challenge this year, but the summer reading program is going on at the local library, and I wound up checking this out when I took my kids to sign up. I have had this book on my list for a while, so I am glad to finally get around to reading it. This is a good reading companion to Empire Of Pain, which I read not terribly long ago. This was a really thought provoking and education book, and very well researched. If you are interested in this topic, I would strongly suggest reading this book, as well as Empire Of Pain. 

 I love poetry, but I haven't read any new poetry in a long time. This author has been randomly showing up on my Facebook feed for several days, so I bought all three books that were available on Kindle. This is the first of the three that I have read.

Some of the poems were not for me, but I really loved some of them. Always, Through, Unread, Your Vast Absence, and The Weight Of Your Goodbye are a few of the ones that I loved the most. I love sad poetry and morbid things, and, oddly, that type of material seems to help heal wounds when you are missing someone or something. I really enjoyed this collection of poems for the most part, and I am really looking forward to the other two books I got. 

 Michael Vick was a professional football player with the Atlanta Falcons at the time of being uncovered as a member of a dog fighting ring. He was sentenced to twenty one months in prison, which is not enough, in my opinion. (Despite his disgusting behavior, he was resigned with the Philadelphia Eagles upon his release. Apparently, having people with character on these sports teams is not something that is required or sought.) Police conducted a raid on his Virginia property, uncovering the dog fighting activities. Over seventy dogs were found in various conditions, and were seized. This book is the story of those dogs.

Unfortunately, dogs who have been used in dog fighting are often extremely aggressive to both people and animals. They are conditioned to be this way by horrible people, and this helps perpetuate the stereotype that these breeds are extremely aggressive all the time. A lot of the dogs that were seized were evaluated and deemed fit for adoption, and this book outlines the lives that have led since their rescue. I am so glad to see that some of these dogs were taken away from this horrible existence and given the chance to live a life that was happy and functional.

If you are interested in this book, it is currently available to listen to on Audible Plus with your membership. The listen time for this book was not very long. It contained a lot of details about the dog fighting ring and the court case, but the best part of the book were all of the survivor stories about the dogs. Despite the dark content, it was a really good book. 

 I think a lot of us are familiar with the Duggar family for one reason or another, most likely from the show 19 Kids And Counting or from the eldest son's disgusting behavior. The author of this book, Jinger, is the sixth child out of nineteen. (Imagine having that many siblings!) Jinger says from the outset that this is not a tell all book about deep, dark secrets of her family, and it is not. She does provide a basic explanation of the teachings of Bill Gothard, whom her parents follow. Gothard is the founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which is an ultra conservative "Christian" sect. As most have learned from the show, there are pretty strict rules about the way one can dress and interact with members of the opposite sex. These teaching push homeschooling, large families, and extreme female submissiveness and obedience. (Gothard, not surprisingly, had many sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him...and people still buy what he is selling. It's disgusting and borderline insanity to me.) Jinger speaks very candidly about her disentangling herself from this bizarre ultra conservative group. She states very strongly, several times, that she is a Christian and still believes in the Bible and a God, but not in the teachings of Gothard.

I have always been interested in different religions, which is part of the reason I chose to do my minor in Cultural Anthropology. I am very interested in cults and religious sects, simply because it is beyond my comprehension how people can buy into and obey some of the nonsense that is put forth. Jinger is a great example of a person who is born into something and raised a certain way, who then chooses to take a hard look at their life and upbringing to reconcile that with the world that exists beyond those restrictive doors. In this book, she mentions how people used to want to "free" her from her family and her religion. I have to admit that I have probably thought that she would be better off getting away from her family and those people, but it is a really rude thing to sit and judge someone for their life they were born into. I am glad that she was able to find her truth and begin living her life in a way that is authentic to her, and I hope that she continues to find happiness in her life. This was a short book, but it was worth reading. 

 This book discusses the concept of land as a property to own and conquer. Over the centuries, wars have been fought over little plots of land as the concept of land ownership really took hold. The author discusses how the offer of land rights helped facilitate migration, even though the land was pilfered from others to do so, which I always find to be an enraging topic. The content of this book is sweeping across the centuries and the changing relationship with land and land ownership. It is difficult to properly summarize the book due to that.

This is probably a four star book, but I feel very generous in giving it three stars. I really like other work by this author, and expected to enjoy this book much more than I did. The writing was not dull or poorly written, I just felt that reading it was extremely tedious. Despite my personal feelings, the book contained a lot of information about how people view land. Ancestral lands, land ownership, the value of land, etc. were all points of discussion in this book, and a lot of valid points were made. I have to admit I had never thought about some of the concepts in this book, and learning things I did not know is always a welcome thing in my world. If you are interested in the relationship people have with land, this may be a good book for you. I may suggest getting the physical copy instead of the Audible version, which I have. It may have been a much better book to read in physical format. 

 This book is filled with personal experiences of a female gang member, Sonia Rodriguez. Her life started out rough, with her father abusing her at the young age of five. She was also abused by her uncle and her mother. She was exposed to gang activity very young, as the Latin Kings and Latin Queens hung out in and around her house. Her sister was friends with them, which led to her becoming involved with the Latin Queens. Her experiences of life in the gang were wild and shocking. Gang life is a rough life, but I can see the appeal of it. It gives you a bizarre sense of family and community, which a lot of people are missing with their poor home lives. A lot of people get involved for protection in the neighborhoods in which gangs often reside. It's a really sad and scary situation.

This book is currently available to listen to on Audible Plus, and it is a pretty short listen. I finished this is no time, but I also never sleep, which probably helps. I added this one to my library because I had read My Bloody Life by this same author and liked it. The writing was well done, and the story was interesting. It gives a really personal, first hand perspective of life in a gang. If you are interested in gang life, or the Latin Kings and Latin Queens in particular, check this out. Reymundo Sanchez has another book besides this one and the one I mentioned before, called Once A King, Always A King. I have not gotten to read that one yet, but I would like to and believe that it would be very good. 

 This book discusses the history of the Jewish Gangsters of Chicago. They were called many things, and a lot of those contained the word "kosher" which was a play on Jewish food laws. This group grew exponentially during the influx of immigration to the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, which did not help the anti-immigrant sentiment in the pre and post World War I eras. Much like their infamous Italian-American counterparts, the Jewish members had a pretty lucrative organized crime syndicate going on. They were involved in the same things that we think of when we think of the Mafia: bookmaking, loansharking, prostitution, and bootlegging. (Of course, bootlegging isn't really a thing these days, but there are a lot of white collar crimes that go on in criminal syndicates in the present day.)

Prior to reading this book, I was only familiar with a few Jewish names that were involved in organized crime. The most notable of those names would have to be Arnold Rothstein, though he operated in New York City. Meyer Lansky and Mickey Cohen are two other names that I can recall from that time period. I am much less familiar with the Mafia dealing in Chicago than I am in New York and New Jersey, aside from what I know of Al Capone. This book was exceptionally educational to me. I have been wanting to learn more about Jewish history than what is contained in the small window of the Holocaust, so this was a good way to add to my knowledge. Most of the literature I found while looking for books like this focused on Las Vegas and New York. According to the Jewish Book Council, this is the first in depth look at the doings and history of Chicago's Jewish gangsters.

In addition to having a wealth of information, the book was well researched and written in a way that made it enjoyable to read. I love history and I love Mafia books, so this was absolutely a book that was right up my alley. This book is also currently available to listen to for free on Audible Plus if you are interested in doing so. I really liked learning about some of these people, and some of the events and situations were familiar to me from knowing about Al Capone and also from watching Boardwalk Empire. I was really pleased with this book, and I am glad that I picked it to listen to. 

 

Catherine Susan Genovese, also known as Kitty, was born in 1935 to Italian American parents in Brooklyn, New York. Kitty was briefly married, but that marriage was annulled due to her sexuality. She worked several jobs, with her last job being a bartender. (She was even once arrested for bookmaking, because she took bets from customers on horse races. This is part of the reason people think she had ties to the Mafia, as well as her last name being Genovese.) In the wee morning hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty was followed home to the apartment she shared with her girlfriend by a man. He accosted her with a knife as she was going into her apartment. I won't ruin the book with more details about her attack and death, but it is a fact that her last moments on earth were horrifying.

This book is currently free to listen to on Audible Plus, and it wasn't very long. I listened to most of it while I was folding laundry and cleaning up the kitchen. This book cleared up a lot of misinformation that I had about this case. I, like many others, thought she was in with the Mafia. There was also a thing going around that there were dozens of witnesses who did nothing to help her, which wasn't entirely true at all. I thought this shed some light on the "bystander effect" where it is posited that people are less likely to help someone if there are other people present. It's a very bizarre concept to me, and this book was enlightening in that aspect. This was a well written book, as well as interesting. If you are looking for a fairly short true crime listen, look into this one.

 

 This book takes a deep dive into the Sassoon family. The family originated with Sassoon ben Salih, who, along with his family, were the treasurers of the pashas of Baghdad. He had two sons, David and Joseph, who ultimately wound up leaving the area due to political issues. David wound up in Bombay for a while, mixing himself up in the opium trade, and raking in the dough. Despite the fact that he made his money in an unfortunate way, he did a lot of philanthropy work. His drug money built schools, hospitals, and museums, providing jobs and resources for many people. David and Joseph expanded not only their businesses, but their families. Each generation had all kinds of business deals, resulting in the cementing of this family as one of the richest and most influential families of the time. Several members were involved in politics and rubbed elbows with Edward VII, Prince of Wales.

The author of this book, Joseph Sassoon, is a distant relative of the original Sassoon family. He has has a pretty amazing career all on his own. In addition to being an accomplish author, he is currently the director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University. He is also an associate at St. Antony's College in Oxford. He is fluent in several languages, which helped him in his research into the family, as a lot of documents were in various languages. In addition to learning about this family, I also enjoyed learning about this author. In a time were anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise and loud, it is nice to be able to support people in the community and learn about different aspects of Jewish history. I have to admit most of my knowledge of Jewish history comes from whatever I have learned as a World War II history major, and not from other sources or people. I am absolutely going to look into more of this type of material, because there is a long, rich history that I am missing out on knowing about. The author did an interview, which I looked up after I finished this book, and one of the things that he said he hoped people would take away from this book is that migrant people are human beings that often leave their homes with next to nothing and fight their way up from the bottom. That is something that a lot of people could do with considering.

This book was amazing. The only Sassoon name that I had ever heard prior to seeing this book was Vidal Sassoon, and, as it turns out, he was only distantly related to the family that this book focuses on. (He was related to them through his father, David Sassoon, who resided in London. His mother was an Ashkenazi Jew, which is also a very neat fact.) I had no idea about the work the members of this family put in to make a name for themselves, and certainly had never heard of the "Rothschilds Of The East" as they were often called. Obviously, the author has a lot of first hand information to go with, but the book was exceptionally well researched. To be a book about family dynasties, it was certainly not dry or tedious to read. I wish that I would have gotten to this book sooner. It was a lot of fun learning about all of these people and the influences they had in business and society that can still be seen today.