True Organized Crime

Considered by Ty Cobb as the "finest natural hitter in the history of the game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career .356 batting average - which is still ranked third all-time - the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport's history. That is until the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.

Mafia Spies is the definitive account of America’s most remarkable espionage plots ever - with CIA agents, mob hitmen, “kompromat” sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing devices together in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue. In the early 1960s, two top gangsters, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, were hired by the CIA to kill Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, only to wind up murdered themselves amidst Congressional hearings and a national debate about the JFK assassination.

In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.

The definitive portrait of the powerful, corruption-ridden Teamsters union and its legendary president Jimmy Hoffa - organizer, gangster, convict, and conspirator - with a new afterword by the author.

Like sharks to blood in the water, the mob arrived in Hollywood greedy and ready to tear away huge chunks of cash. Opportunistic mobsters saw labor unions as the means for muscling into the movie industry and extorting millions of dollars from studio bosses. Control the unions to which projectionists, art directors, cinematographers, electricians, scene designers, stagehands, extras belong, and you control the whole industry.

¿Qué tiene que ver el asesinato de tres mujeres y seis niños, a mitad del desierto, con la disputa por la riqueza minera de un país? En apariencia nada, si eso no hubiese ocurrido en México… La riqueza minera mexicana se encuentra intrínsecamente ligada a la violencia. En las últimas décadas, cientos de mineras han aplicado un modelo de despojo de tierras y desplazamiento de poblaciones donde existen altos intereses extractivos, muchas veces apoyadas por el crimen organizado.

Author Ron Chepesiuk chronicles the little known history of organized crime in Harlem.

African American organized crime has had as significant an impact on its constituent community as Italian, Jewish, and Irish organized crime has had on theirs. Gangsters are every bit as colorful, intriguing, and powerful as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, and have a fascinating history in gambling, prostitution, and drug dealing. In the late 1800s, Harlem became a highly fashionable neighborhood.

The Shot Caller is both a never-to-be-forgotten insider’s look at the violent world of gangs and prison life and a powerful, modern demonstration of how God will go to the most miraculous extremes to reach even the worst sinners. Casey Diaz came to this country when he was just two years old, the oldest son of El Salvadorian immigrants who settled in the barrios near downtown Los Angeles in the 1970s. An abusive family life propelled Casey into street gangs at the age of eleven and he rose quickly within the ranks of the Rockwood Street Locos to become their leader.

I've written what I call an autobiographical, historical book. As you listen, you'll follow my rise from just a 1970s kid selling drugs out of my mom's house into a life of crime lasting more than 22 years and the road that took me from 3 finger ozs and 1/2 grams of Blow to moving tons of weed and thousands of pounds of Cocaine. And from the fast life of Cigarette boats, racing cars, and Learjets—to just hanging on for dear life. You'll listen about the history of how the drug wars started and how, along with some of the biggest smugglers in the world, I was more than willing to help.

At 33, Virginia Vallejo was part of the media elite. A renowned anchorwoman and socialite, and a model who appeared on magazine covers worldwide, Vallejo was the darling of Colombia's most powerful politicians and billionaires. Meeting Pablo Escobar in 1983, then becoming his mistress for many years, she witnessed the rise of a drug empire that was characterized by Escobar's far-reaching political corruption, his extraordinary wealth, and a network of violent crime that lasted until his death in 1993.

Those were the days when you drove to Vegas from Iowa or Ohio or took a junket flight from New York. The Missus would wear her best dress and mink coat, find her lucky slot machine, and you would find the hot craps table. Maybe you’d slip the maître d’ a couple bucks to sit at an A table in the showroom for the big production numbers with showgirls and plenty of feathers and not much else. Or you’d get to see Elvis at the International or Sinatra at the Sands.

For fans of the Netflix show Narcos and readers of true crime, Kilo is a deeply reported account of life inside Colombia’s drug cartels, using unprecedented access in the cartels to trace a kilo of cocaine - from the fields where it is farmed, to the hit men who protect it, to the smuggling ships that bring it to American shores.

The story of Paul LeRoux, the twisted genius entrepreneur and cold-blooded killer who brought revolutionary innovation to international crime, and the exclusive inside story of how the DEA’s elite, secretive 960 Group brought him down.

As an associate of the Gambino family, Ferrante relied on his instincts to pull off some of the biggest heists in US history. By the age of 21, he had netted millions of dollars for his employers. His natural talent for management led Mafia bosses to rely on him. After being arrested and serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence, Ferrante went straight. He realized that the Mob's most valuable business lessons would allow him to survive and thrive in the real world.

From their birthplace in Phenix City, Alabama to the corruption of today, the Dixie Mafia’s tentacles stretch from coast to coast throughout the south. While most of the world denies their existence, this network of freelance criminals have flown under the radar for the most part since the 1950s. Their structure is completely different than that of La Cosa Nostra so people discount them as rogue bands of individual criminals. In reality it’s one massive web of corruption, lies, and murder.

En La parábola de Pablo, Alonso Salazar presenta dimensiones íntimas, cuadros complejos, humanos y brutales del hombre que se convirtió en el mayor capo de la droga del mundo moderno y en un sanguinario que arrinconó a la sociedad en la que vivió con su imperio de poder, riqueza y delirio y su posterior caída.

This is the true story of how El Chapo built the world’s wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months’ worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo’s family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down.

NYPD officers Mike Dowd and Kenny Eurell knew there were two ways to get rich quick in Brooklyn's Lower East Side. You either became drug dealers, or you robbed drug dealers. They decided to do both. Dowd and Eurell ran the most powerful gang in New York's dangerous 75th Precinct, the crack cocaine capitol of 1980s America.

"We are the people our parents warned us about" is the motto of the Bandidos, one of the world's most feared outlaw motorcycle gangs. For ten years, Steve Utah was a Bandidos insider. He arranged the security of their clubhouses. He 'cooked' ecstasy and ice for them. He was at meetings where interstate and overseas drug and weapons smuggling was planned. He saw stolen military weapons being sold. He witnessed vicious beatings, helped dump corpses.It all became too much and, in an attempt to regain control of his life, Utah resorted to the unthinkable....

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now, Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure.