Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Criminals & Outlaws

John "Red" Shea, 40, was a top lieutenant in the South Boston Irish mob run, led by James "Whitey" Bulger. An ice-cold enforcer with a red-hot temper, Shea was a legend among his peers in the 1990s South Boston, as much as John Gotti, Bugsy Siegel, and Al Capone were in their time and place. When the actor and producer Mark Wahlberg, raised in nearby Dorchester, learned of a script based on Shea's life circulating in Hollywood, he immediately committed to playing the gangster on screen. A major feature film project is now in development.

From the age of thirteen, when he started...

While researching a book on Depression-era outlaws, Playboy editor William J. Helmer stumbled upon a 600-page manuscript on John Dillinger. Written in the 1930s by G. Russell Girardin but never published, Dillinger: The Untold Story is a captivating and revealing account of Dillinger's life and crimes, based in part on information given to Girardin by the outlaw's lawyer, Louis Piquett, shortly after Dillinger's death. Though a series of articles written by Girardin and Piquett appeared in various newspapers at the time, the manuscript continued to yellow on the shelf for half a century...

In 1931, a 12-year-old boy shot and killed the sheriff of Asotin, Washington. The incident stunned the small town and a mob threatened to hang him. Both the crime and Herbert Niccolls's eventual sentence of life imprisonment at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla drew national attention, only to be buried later in local archives.

Journalist Nancy Bartley has conducted extensive research to construct a compelling narrative of the events and characters that make this a unique episode in the history of criminal justice in the United States. Niccolls became a cause for...

This shocking expose goes behind the headlines to uncover the true story of Clark Rockefeller, wealthy scion of a great American family, who kidnapped his own daughter and vanished. The police and FBI were baffled. Tips poured in, but every lead was a dead end ... because "Clark Rockefeller" did not exist. In a gripping work of investigative journalism, Mark Seal reveals how German native Christian Gerhartsreiter came to the United States, where he stepped in and out of identities for decades, eventually...

""A riveting investigation of the world's most notorious arms dealer--a page-turner that digs deep into the amazing, murky story of Viktor Bout. Farah and Braun have exposed the inner workings of one of the world's most secretive businesses--the international arms trade.""
--Peter L. Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know

""Viktor Bout is like Osama bin Laden: a major target of U.S. intelligence officials who time and again gets away. Farah and Braun have skillfully documented how this notorious arms dealer has stoked violence...

"Shakespeare Saved My Life touches on the search for meaning in life, the struggles that complicate the path to triumph and the salvation that can be found in literature's great works ... An inspiring account."--Shelf Awareness

A female professor, a super maximum security prisoner, and how Shakespeare saved them both

Shakespeare professor and prison volunteer Laura Bates thought she had seen it all. That is, until she decided to teach Shakespeare in a place the bard had never been before -- supermax solitary confinement.

In this...

After Tom Ketchum had been sentenced to death for attempting to hold up a railway train, his attorneys argued that the penalty was "cruel and unusual" for the offense charged. The appeal failed and he became the first individual--and the last--ever to be executed for a crime of this sort. He was hanged in 1901; in a macabre ending to his life of crime, his head was torn away by the rope as he fell from the gallows.

Tom Ketchum was born in 1863 on a farm near the fringe of the Texas frontier. At the age of nine, he found himself an orphan and was raised by his older brothers. In his...