1 comments about The Ski Mask Way: Based on a True Story.

1. Although words can't be used to describe how truly HOT, this novel really is, I decided to pick a few of my favorite to give you an idea!
   
   SPLENDID, SUPERB, SUPERIOR, WONDERFUL...and the characters were...VICIOUS, WICKED, FIERCE FEROCIOUS!!!
   
   To say that I thorougly enjoyed this novel is an understatement. And the fact that it's based on a true story is CHILLING!
   
   From the very begginging Randy pulled me into the pages of this novel and I felt like I was right beside Ski through his entire journey. Although some disloyal people surrounded themselves around Ski, (disguised as friends) I smiled when I realized that in the end REAL friendship prevails.
   
   You are a fool if you call yourself a lover of "Street Fiction" and don't cop this book!
   
   It's a MUST READ!!!

5 comments about I Love You Phillip Morris.

1. Steven Russell is the ideal antihero: he's resourceful, a conman, and bisexual. Author and journalist Steve McVicker doesn't go into detail why Russell, a family man with a great career, would chose a life of crime over the banal world of law abiding citizens. But after reading the book you can infer that Russell, an ingenious Type A personality, was probably simply bored with doing things lawfully. I enjoyed the book for what it was worth. McVicker writes with a true journalistic style. We wouldn't believe the story otherwise. In fact, McVicker emphasis how much research went into the book; and when he cannot verify Russell's assertions of facts, he lets us know. Otherwise, Russell's entire story is corroborated by first hand accounts of those involved, including prison guards and former coworkers. Reading the accounts of how Russell was able to dupe government officials and corporate America over and over again was engrossing, and I couldn't help but cheer for him, despite his being an embezzler and con artist. It wasn't so much how brilliant Russell was in his escapades, but how inept and lazy everyone else was. Russell himself credits many of his exploits on the sluggishness of prison staff and state bureaucracies. Russell makes a life of non-violent crime and prison escapes look easy--and fun! The book is extremely concise; most the narrative focuses on the planning stages of Russell's many con games and prison escapes. That was fine with me. However, if you are expecting drawn out descriptions of budding prison romances, you won't find that in this book. The only contention I have with the book is when McVicker uses a jarring opportunity to bash Wal-Mart; other than that McVicker keeps most his personal opinions to himself, as a journalist should. I also cringed every time McVicker used the word "lover" to describe Russell's boyfriends. That word is an anachronism, more fitting for the 1970s than today. The book itself was not published by a large publisher, so despite the book being in hardcover format, it's a cheap vinyl cover with no dust jacket--just to let you know. Other than that, I enjoyed the book and look forward to seeing how Hollywood botches the story.



2. I picked this one up when my idol, Jim Carrey, announced he was planning to do a BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and play the main part, Steven Russell, in the true story that electrified a nation, a man who would break out of jail over and over again to join his lover, Phillip Morris. Jim has made some brave choices in his career (anyone see his latest dud THE NUMBER 23?), but I think if he plays his cards right he may wind up with an Oscar. First he has to learn a Southern accent, not easy for a Canadian, but Raymond Massey did it and so can our Jim.
   
   Steve McVicker isn't a young man and it shows in the maturity he brings to the writing of what could have turned out to be a sleazy story. As a distinguished reporter, he's playing it cagey about whether or not he himself is actually gay, but he's convincing enough to accurately portray Russell's long journey out of the closet and into the swinging, pre-AIDS homosexual lifestyle of Montrose, the third-densest gay mecca in the world, says McVicker, and to think that before reading this book I had never even heard of it. Along the way Russell acquired a very religious wife and sired a daughter, Stephanie, and both ladies have clung to their man through right and wrong even when he left them to pursue his lifestyle, and even after he was convicted on multiple counts of fraud.
   
   The book is a primer for how to get away with grifting on a large scale. It will teach you how you, barely a high school graduate, can use the internet or other sources to gather enough info and fake resumes to get your a place as CFO at a major HMO, if you can talk glibly enough and you're personable (and you're not out on the job). This is what happened to Russell, who talked himself into a position from which he could embezzle millions of dollars.
   
   The book is a little dull at times, and frankly Phillip Morris doesn't seem worth all the fuss Russell sees in him, he comes across as a bit of a ditz, like an Owen Wilson type. Funny how both Russell's boyfriends loved little dogs and they really go for Min Pins--again a term I never heard before reading I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS.
   
   The shadow of AIDS falls on the otherwise lighthearted adventures of super con man Steven Russell and you know, in a way, I don't blame him for what he did, for he was trying to give his dying boyfriend the best care he could find him. C'mon, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks won the Oscar for playing gay and you can too.



3. Entertaining read. McVicker provides a good yarn. Larger then life characters and twists in a real life story. Top notch tale.



4. The wild story of a conman who favors doctored resumes and red stretch pants as props to steal whatever he desires. He just can't outwit his sentimental heart. I read it in one sitting.



5. There's no doubting that this book is compelling, both in idea and execution. The prisoner who keeps returning for the man he loves? The life history of both? Good stories of prison breaks? Hard to keep a heist lover down. A solid, fun read, perfect for passing the time with a good story.

   That said, McVicker's a writer for a (good) weekly alternative paper, and this book reads like an overlong story from those pages, filled up with anecdotes that go just this shy of deep. I'm just not as impressed with the depth of characterizations or the writing as I am with writings in a similar narrative vein.

3 comments about Prisoner of Love (New York Review Books Classics).

1. If the reader is looking for easy explanations to the Palestinian refugees' war with the nation of Israel, Jean Genet's book is not the place to seek them. And I don't advise readers to pick through the text looking for the succinct sentences in which Genet clearly states why he's on the side of the Palestinians, or if he's anti-Israel, or anti-American. There is no proof of reviewer Tim Keane's conclusion that Genet "seethes with hatred of Israel"; there are no such violent emotions in Prisoner of Love. At 430 pages, be prepared to find subtleties of experience shaded by conflicting responses--nuances completely unavailable via print journalism or network news, CNN, or Al Jazeera. But the very fact that Genet wanted to observe life in the refugee camps shows that he had to make a choice. Nearly all the protagonists of his memoir, this textual "souvenirs," are Palestinians and generally Muslim. Indeed, the compelling force which drives the relatively plotless Prisoner of Love are the individuals to whom Jean attachments himself: the dynamic Lieutenant Mubarak, Dr. Mahjoub and the charismatic female doctor, Dr. Nabila, Khaled Abu Khaled and Abu Omar, and an accomplished woman friend, a blond Lebanese guide and translator, Nidal, and dozens of other people. Genet was particularly attached to Hamza and his mother, who he attempts to find again after his absence from Palestine for nearly 14 years. We cannot forget the common fedayee rebel, the fedayeen as a whole who fought to make the Palestinian plight known.
   
   When evaluating Prisoner of Love, it's important to remember that Genet is a writer. Throughout his work, Genet tells us how difficult it is to recount his experiences since he's not sure at times what he's seeing, and he must make his writing conform to the necessities of craft. And whatever writing craft decisions Jean made it is clear that the Palestinians "wrote" him as well; Jean was seldom in control of his experience. As I read, I realized that Genet is the ultimate refugee; he seeks to be with people who are like him. My conclusion is this: Palestine chose him.
   
   Only Genet could have written this book. He is a bruised romantic searching for a resting place that will caress both his homeless intellect and his orphaned body: "A little while ago I wrote that though I shall die, nothing else will. And I must make my meaning clear. Wonder at the sight of a corn-flower, at a rock, at the touch of a rough hand--all the millions of emotions of which I'm made--they won't disappear even though I shall. Other men will experience them, and they'll still be there because of them. More and more I believe I exist in order to be the terrain and proof which show other men that life consists in the uninterrupted emotions flowing through all creation" (361). As an orphan with prison experience, and disaffected from France, Genet was willing to try on other peoples' lives; I suspect that without the structure dictated by the craft of writing, and his talent coming to the attention of well-known writers, Genet would have disappeared into the French prison system.
   
   Another conclusion I came to: Genet shows us the difference between terrorism and Arab nationalism. Is there any hope that the U.S., of which I am a native-born citizen, will ever figure out this difference?
   
   Overwhelmingly, the single image I have of Prisoner of Love is that to read it is to travel the land that dwelled *in* Jean Genet, this traveler who was intelligent enough to let his emotions guide him. And only by reading can I share in living a life which speaks so eloquently of rebellion and blood, of life and death.



2. Genet allows you to feel the immediacy of the Palestinian situation with particles from lives,from ill-defined fragments of lives disrupted with no future,he stayed with a family in 1980 a half-day and a whole night where the young son,Hamza a fedayee went off at night to fight. Genet hearing gun fire in the distance inhabited his bed and was brought Turkish coffee and water in the night as a replacement for the young man,by his mother. Genet is a writer/poet,a political thinker,but never a man of politics, a deeply sensitive man,a virtuoso of the sensual image, as the starry-night reflected against the curtain in his room with the small blue table. "Of course it's understood that the words,nights,forests,septet,jubilation desertion and despair are the same words that I have to use to describe the goings on at dawn in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris when the drag queens depart after celebrating their mystery,doing their accounts and smoothing banknotes out of the dew."

   Genet was allowed with special permission to visit the massacre site at the camps at Sabra and Chantila,smelling the rotting flesh, "They happened I was affected by them. I talked about them. But while the act of writing came later, after a period of incubation,nevertheless in a moment like that or those when a single cell departs from its usual metabolism and the original link is created of a future,unsuspected cancer,or a piece of lace, so I decided to write this book."

   Genet has an intense need for passion of any dimension,scouring the vigours of whatever parts of fragments of the lifeworld's complexity presents itself to him. I once thought of this book as a romantic means of portrayel a betrayel of a political situation,one, the only one that excited Genet.It means something that only encounterings lives in struggle,bent into a repressive state that Genet finds the only life worth encountering,sensing and feeling about. This book was completed in 1986 after suffering from throat cancer, he died on the night of 14-15th of April,1986,while correcting proofs.




3. This book is absolutely essential to any understanding of the Palestinian situation. It is also the mostimportant work of Genet's entire career.

1 comments about The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

1. Mel Ayton has accomplished something that no one writing about the RFK
   asssassination has ever achieved before. By combining a judicious
   review of the forensic and eyewitness evidence with a firm grasp of the
   historical context, Ayton has finally made sense of the 1968 killing.
   THE FORGOTTEN TERRORIST is a long overdue reminder that assassination
   is political murder.

5 comments about The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader.

1. As a person who has long tried to understand how this person could be a part of the horrible things he did, this book is very revealing. Through the use of first-hand accounts from people who interacted with bin Laden at different phases of his life, the reader sees how a person very strict muslim views are radicalized to the point where killing innocent people becomes a real option. Mr. Bergen's work is pretty rigorous and he's to be commended for it.
   
   I purchased the audio version of this book and I thought he did a good job, although I could have done without some of the inflection he used to differentiate between Bergen's words and the first-hand experiences of those interviewed.



2. I enjoyed the contents of this book, it is very informative. Peter Bergen gets into deep detail regarding O. Bin Laden's past and whereabouts before 9/11. However, sometimes I felt it had too much detail that didn't really had to be included in the book. One thing is for sure, Peter Bergen is the journalist to ask about O. Bin Laden. He has credibility.



3. I listened to this as an audio CD. This method would of course be better since writting verbatim the way people talk is always hard to read. Just read one of the speeches that Bush makes to see the difference.



4. Peter Bergen is a journalist, so it is not surprising that this book is a collection of brief interviews or quotes rather than one long narrative. The interviews are arranged chronologically, with some comments by Bergen interspersed to make a more cohesive and readable book. Bergen has clearly done his homework, and this book provides the reader with a good understanding of who Bin Laden is and where he came from. Now if Bergen could just tell us where to find Bin Laden today . . .



5. A good read. Learn all about osama,this is something the government think tanks, should have done. From a very rich family with a good name to the depths of evil. When you think of evil, think of osama and hitler in the same thought.

No comments about Charles Manson - Helter Skelter and Beyond (Biography).

5 comments about Joey the Hitman: The Autobiography of a Mafia Killer (Adrenaline Classics Series).

1. JOEY IS for real. The services he purveys are death and destruction. And as a blood member of the American Mob he is also qualified to speak on hi-jacking, smuggling, loansharking, operating liquor stills and making porno films. But his specialty is murder, and he tells all about that.
   
   This is the story of a man without conscience, in his own words.
   
   "A good hit man goes out, does the job, comes home to his family and can ssit down and eat his dinner with no problems. See, the thing I do best is kill people."
   
   " I have never killed an honest man. And I have never been convicted. All I need is a clientele- a demand for my services."



2. The nagging things about this book are it's many inconsistencies. He said he was making 150 dollars a day starting at 11, but he later says he knows what it's like to make no money. What, as a 10 year old? Or he had 10 poor years with his family? He says he was a tough teenager, didn't care if he lived or died. Then he says he got that attitude at 28 when his wife was murdered. And he seems to have been everywhere and have seen and know just about everyone who is/was famous in organized crime. There's a bunch of others, I'll let you find them, as you can add an extra star for entertainment in looking for them. But these things point to a subject that was made up and not consistent because its not real. If you want a real account of "hit" men, read Murder, Inc. It still rings modern even though it was written in 1951. And you can't put it down.
   
   I give this 3 stars because of it inconsistencies.



3. I read the original "Killer", by Joey, back in the early 70`s.I also saw a masked "Joey" interviewed on the Sunday evening talk show "Open Mind" by David Susskind. Susskind berates Joey, at one point, for using the slur"Pollack". Susskind said"You wouldn`t want me to use an anti-Italian epithet, would you?"Joey retorted."I wouldn`t care, really, since I`m not Italian. I`m Jewish"(Susskind was stunned!) Also, in "Killer", Joey recounts a meeting in a NYC club with the reputed Columbo crime family soldier, Carmine Di Biasi, in which he describes shoving the barrel of his revolver into Di Biasi`s mouth after Di Biasi "insulted my Ethnic backround". All in all,this is not a Primer on organized crime.To really enjoy this book you are better off reading a few other books first, such as "Mafia USA","The Grim Reapers","Pictorial History of the Mafia" or "The Vallachi Papers".



4. I read this many years ago when it first came out entitled as 'Killer' and thought it was a fascinating look at the business of crime. However, I just bought the reissue and noticed that a whole chapter devoted to Joey and his feelings about women was dropped. Why so? Were the publishers getting PC about a Mafia killer so as not to offend new readers? Anyone have the original? And does anyone have any info on Joey's real name? A mention was made of his obit in Time magazine...date and issue anyone?



5. Some good anecdotes. My problem with this book is that, in contrast to books written later, it is totally anonymous. Might have been necessary in the old days, but those were the old days.

5 comments about Blood Brother: 33 Reasons My Brother Scott Peterson Is Guilty.

1. I read this book right after the one written by Laci's mother Sharon Rocha. This one was particularly good because Anne gave a great account of how her brother behaved before and after Laci's murder.



2. If you find yourself still interested in the case of Laci Peterson, then this book is for you. It takes you on a journey through the life and death of Laci Peterson through the overlooked point of view of Laci's sister-in-law, Anne Bird. It is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, but no matter how many books are written on this subject nothing will ever change the disheartening ending that Laci Peterson will not get to have the child she had so joyfully looked forward to raising.



3. Jackie & Scott are evil, lying narcissists. Thank God Anne, was adopted to a wonderful family. Jackie should be questioned for her role in Laci's disappearance because I believe Jackie hindered the investigation with information she may know about the murder; all in an effort to protect Scott.
   I hope that Anne is able to focus on her adopted parents, her children & her husband & move forward with her life. Great book!



4. Book came fairly quickly, it's in excellent shape and I am looking forward to reading it.



5. Blood Brother: 33 Reasons My Brother Scott Peterson Is Guilty
   After reading this book I think she hit the nail on the head saying Scott like his mother Jackie thought of children as disposable. Scott stayed with Ann off and on and she observed first hand his behavior.This was a man glad to be rid of the responsibilities of husbandhood and fatherhood.

1 comments about 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen 1835-1935.

1. The history of Texas is teeming with good guys, bad guys, shootouts, and barfights, 'or so the story goes.' 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen: 1835-1935 by Laurence J. Yadon and Dan Anderson is chock-full of interesting and enlightening facts about the outlaws and lawmen that make up the rich history of Texas law enforcement. The book is an encyclopedic account, making it easy to navigate but contains a fond humor that ensures it is an entertaining read. Yadon and Anderson include a helpful timeline that chronologically outlines gunfights, robberies, and arrests. Texans will enjoy reading little known facts about local places and names. Readers will reunite with old friends such as Bonnie and Clyde and Machine Gun Kelly and will become acquainted with new characters just as daring and ruthless. Overall, 200 Outlaws and Lawmen is an informative resource for historians and an enlightening, fun read for Texans, history buffs, and those looking for action packed history.

5 comments about Confessions of a Second Story Man: Junior Kripplebauer and the K & A Gang.

1. This is a very accurate book. I knew most of the people in this book because I grew up with them. Some were my friends.Many years later, as a detective at East Detectives , in Philadelphia, I saw them frequently.
   As luck would have it, they were under arrest at those times. I was probably most friendly with Donnie Abrahms, known as "Don the Dude".
   I was sorry to see he was still in the old neighborhood. At least he isn't in prison or dead as most of the old crowd is. This was very nostalgic reading for me.



2. Excellent book!!!! My father was "Raybo". He would have really enjoyed reading this book. Just as your dad had changed, mine did too. The stories from back then were fun to listen to over the years, but it was his past. I remeber him telling me his stories, and the funny comments he would say. I always wondered if he just added that stuff to make the story amusing, but when the author talks about when my dad got shot in the leg and he told the bartender to leave his drink he'd be back by last call I couldn't help but laugh. He REALLY was like that! He was always a funny guy:-)
   
   I thought I was gonna die when I saw my fathers picture in this book as I stood in Barnes and Noble. I couldn't believe it!!!!!
   
   P.S. EVERYTHING they did was against the law.....DUH



3. I grew up in Kensington and know several of the people referenced in the book. Therefore; the book probably had more impact on me than it would on others, but it is an interesting book much in the same vain as the movie Good Fellows. If you like stories about wise guys and crooks it is a great read



4. I am a philadelphian interested in the city's history. I have found that this book has provided insight into a section of philadelphia that i have traveled through but had no in depth knowledge of. The characters described in the narrative were colorful and resourceful,yet in the end met the end that was inevitable. A few of the main characters found some redemption,others did not. There is no fantasy in this book,it is hard realism. Mr. Hornblum is a competent chronicler



5. Even though his name wasn't printed (thankfully), the book brought back many good memories and stories for my dad (an former K&A guy himself.) His days of running with Dolan, "Raybo", and the Stockers are long behind him and distant memories, but if he says the book is pretty accurate, then I believe him. He should know since he had "ringside" seats for most of it.
   
   Great stuff!