A Bloody Business

Dylan Struzan, Drew Struzan

• Publisher: Titan Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781785657702
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785657719
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

The real story, unvarnished and uncensored, of the Mob's rise to power during Prohibition ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF PROHIBITION, LEARN WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. In 1919, the National Prohibition Act was passed, making it illegal across America to produce, distribute, or sell liquor. With this act, the U.S. Congress also created organized crime as we know it. Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs sprang up to supply the suddenly illegal commodity to the millions of people still eager to drink it. Men like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz and Bugsy Siegel, Al Capone in Chicago and Nucky Johnson in Atlantic City, waged a brutal war for power in the streets and on the waterfronts. But if you think you already know this story…think again, since you've never seen it through the eyes of one of the mobsters who lived it. Called "one of the most significant organized crime figures in the United States" by the U.S. District Attorney, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo was just 15 years old when Prohibition became law. Over the next decade, Alo would work side by side with Lansky and Luciano as they navigated the brutal underworld of bootlegging, thievery and murder. Alo's later career included prison time and the ultimate Mob tribute: being immortalized as "Johnny Ola" in The Godfather, Part II. Introduced to the 91-year-old Alo living in retirement in Florida, Dylan Struzan based this book on more than 50 hours of recorded testimony—stories Alo had never shared, and that he forbid her to publish until "after I'm gone." Alo died, peacefully, two months short of his 97th birthday. And now his stories—bracing and violent, full of intrigue and betrayal, hunger and hubris—can finally be told. "Dylan Struzan has delivered a soaring treat for those of us who love mobster history, a sprawling saga drawn not from rumor or recycled myth, but directly from the horse's mouth. Her exploration of mob life and the shadow empires the bootleggers built is an exhilarating rush, a must-read." - FRANK DARABONT, director of THE GREEN MILE and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter One: “Shhhh! Speak Easy!”
• Chapter Two: Trust Your Mother but Cut the Cards
• Chapter Three: Survival of the Fittest
• Chapter Four: Don’t Get Involved
• Chapter Five: Build Capital
• Chapter Six: Play It Low Key
• Chapter Seven: Always Touch Base
• Chapter Eight: Part of Something Is Better Than All of Nothing
• Chapter Nine: We Stick Together, No Matter What
• Chapter Ten: Never Let Your Guard Down
• Chapter Eleven: The House Always Wins
• Chapter Twelve: It’s All How You Spin the Story
• Chapter Thirteen: If At First You Don’t Succeed, There’s Always Gehinnam
• Chapter Fourteen: We All Sign on the Dotted Line
• Chapter Fifteen: Let Slip the Dogs of War
• Chapter Sixteen: In Vino Veritas
• Chapter Seventeen: Yoo-Hoo, Is Anybody?
• Chapter Eighteen: Winner Takes All
• Chapter Nineteen: Now Is the Summer of Our Discontent
• Chapter Twenty: Oh, Come All Ye Faithful
• Chapter Twenty-One: A Clean Conscience Makes a Comfortable Pillow
• Chapter Twenty-Two: Play Nice with Others…or Else
• Chapter Twenty-Three: A Snowball’s Chance
• Chapter Twenty-Four: What’s Yet to Come Is Always a Gamble