No comments about Outlaw Tales of Nevada: True Stories of Nevada's Most Famous Robbers, Rustlers, and Bandits (Outlaw Tales Series).

5 comments about With the Stroke of a Pen: A Story of Ambition, Greed, Infidelity, and the Murder of French Publisher Robert Denoel.

1. I heard about this book on an NPR talkshow. I was interested from the start and WOW what a different way to look at WWII.



2. This is a really fascinating story with lots of interesting "characters". With the Stroke of a Pen is interesting on several levels: a behind the scenes look at the French literary world, an intimate look at everyday French life and a comprehensive discussion about the French Resistance and collaborationists during WWII who were sometimes one in the same. Staman does a great job setting the scene from indepth character descriptions to details of everyday life. She is great at walking the reader through this story as details unfold for her (it is refreshing to see the work that goes into a book, adding validity to all the facts). Staman knows when to share her thoughts and feelings wiht us, and when to let the scene takeover remaining a silent observer. Her creation of conversations is compelling and makes the book very difficult to put down!
   I am also happy that Staman did not forget about Bebert (I know I didn't)and the footnote about Jean Loviton at the end was well deserved (sorry that's a bit cryptic, I don't want to give anything away:)



3. This is a book that builds and builds. By the end I could not stop reading. It puts events in post World War II France in a way that I had not seen before and arguably sheds new light on both the events of the time and the ultimate impact of the Nazi occupation. A super job of weaving true crime with actual historical events. My favorite kind of book.



4. Although I am not finished with this book, I wanted to comment that the author (very uniquely) positioned herself within the story she tells...smoothly transitioning from historical accounts of the characters in the novel to what she was doing...feeling...when she came across a new piece of information. I've never read a novel told in this way before. Somehow, it makes an already gripping, true story more real.

   Fantastic book thus far!




5. There are many forgettable books, there are a few unforgettable books. I own this book,have read it from cover to cover, and found it literally stunning. This story of greed, collusion, and the murder of Robert DeNoel in Nazi occupied Paris is a fascinating and profound tapestry which reveals the threads of a real life murder mystery interwoven with threads of
   generalized corruption, collaboration and duplicitous behavior which were the spawn of a fear induced societal mentality. This one is unforgettable.

No comments about The Accountant's Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel.

5 comments about Have You Seen My Mother: True Story of Parental Kidnap.

1. This is a very moving and thought provoking story. Bryan's delivery of his life story took a lot of effort and must have been emotionally draining on him as well. His story reveals what goes on behind closed doors, something I myself as a former 30 yr. veteran of the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) was ignorant to because they keep everything secret. The sadest part of what this book reveals, is that the JW's elders are NOT qualified counselors and have no specialized training, yet they practice such and have contributed to the suffering of such innocent ones as Bryan and all in the name of their so called, Jehovah God who is actually the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society.
   
   I read the book in 7 straight hours. You can't put it down.



2. Although the story of what Bryan went through is devastating, the book is a fantastic read. I found it very eye-opening and humbling, as many of us take our childhood and parents for granted. I could not put it down. I commend Bryan for the courage and inner strength he found to tell his story. I hope there are more books to come written by this talented author.



3. Bryan Lee McGlothin compelling memoir Have you seen my mother? is the heart-breaking story of one man's quest for love, truth and acceptance. The contrast between the behaviour of both of his parents is most telling. The father professes to be Christian but kidnaps young Bryan from the loving arms of his mother, slandering her in the eyes of the world but more important, in the heart and mind of her love-starved and vulnerable son. The mother, heartsick and desperate in her unsuccessful search for Bryan, flounders mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. While the father "progresses" in his faith and in life, the mother spirals toward tragic circumstances.
   
   Bryan's father's narcissistic selfishness and cruelty are all too familiar to this writer, but the roots of such evil are complex, never easily explained.
   
   McGlothin does a commendable job setting forth his story in his quest for truth. What he discovers will break your heart. It might also educate and humble you.



4. I could not put this book down! Jehovah Witnesses and non-Jehovah Witnessed could benefit from Bryan's heart breaking experience. We all take life, and being a parent for that matter, for granted sometimes. This book truely opens one's eyes to how easily we are manipulated by our social environment and how it molds us to the core...touching every cell of our being.
   The lies and deception that Bryan experienced by being kidnapped from his own mother are devastating! The end results are heart-wrenching....



5. Very well written. It shows how a life and family can be torn apart by a high control group. More of these types of books should be written, to show the world that this happens not just occassionally, but happens frequently. The world needs to know.
   I could not put it down.

5 comments about Telling It All - My Life As A Con Man.

1. Dave Gray (AKA Alabama Fats) takes the confessional platform in this excellent book TELLING IT ALL - MY LIFE AS A CON MAN, a reflection of a life of crime as shared by an 80-year-old African American to writer Steven Levi, and what makes this book even better than the rather sensational aspect of its con man content is a survey of social history from 1927 to 2007, a period of great change in the status of African American position in the culture of the USA. It is a terrifically entertaining and informative brief read, but it is also a reflection of change we all need to remember.
   
   Alabama Fats is the child of a poverty stricken family who at age 19 met up with a con artist who introduced him to the profession of taking money from people by means of card games (Three Card Molly) and money scams such as Bank Agents. Fats 'tells it all' without remorse, sharing techniques and secrets of how 'lames' (victims) could be identified and bilked out of their cash. And while this information is rather startling and fascinating and shocking, the method of sharing the changes in the way con men worked as the atmosphere in the USA changed from the Depression years through the post-WW II years, through the spend thrift 1950s, into the 1960s and beyond gives a unique historical vantage: the disappearance of trains as a common means of transportation, the introduction of credit cards and checks overriding the carrying of cash, and the altered view of the African American male with the shift from Inner City ghetto life to integration of cities and the speedy exit modes of the automobile culture changed the approach of the con artist as 'progress' altered life in the US.
   
   If the book is at times repetitive (and what conversation with older people isn't?) and despite excessive editorial flaws, this is a fine little book to read and from which to learn. Steven Levi captures a refreshing freedom of style that makes this little volume feel like an oral history, and while Alabama Fats makes no apologies for his life as a con man, he concludes his true story with a warning for folks (especially the vulnerable elderly) to be aware that the streets are still populated with artists trained to take their money. Grady Harp, September 07



2. Telling it All: My Life as a Con Man is the true-life memoir of professional African-American con man "Alabama Fats", as told to author Steven Levi. Alabama Fats was a black man who made a career of working the streets and conning people out of their money, whether through a game of Three Card Molly or by posing as a Bank Agent or selling junk jewelry for far more than its true value. His talent was to sucker marks (or "lames", as he calls them) who thought they would be cheating him - often with the help of a partner. "I'm not writing this book to help the con; I'm doing it for the old people who are going to get conned, because there are lots of people just like me out on the streets." Alabama Fats is unrepentant of the cheating he did, but gives the straight scoop on the life of a scam artist, and how the nature of the con evolved from the 30's and the Great Depression to the war-torn 40's to the latter half of the twentieth century when cars became more common than trains, to the modern era of credit cards and checks, when cash isn't so easy to find on lames anymore. An utterly captivating "must-read" especially for anyone who thinks they're immune to the con. "If you are a young person reading this book, keep an eye on your mother and father and grandparents... Know who they are talking to. Con men like me will sting anyone. We don't care and the older people are the easiest to con... If you don't watch out for your parents and grandparents, they will lose it all... If they are in a nursing home and lose it all, they could end up living with you." Highly recommended.



3. This book is a must read for those who want to climb inside the criminal mind and protect themselves from those who think that way. Keep yourself one step ahead of crooks and read this book. You'll be glad you did!



4. This is a very engaging read. It's rather scary, I think--especially since this man is a real person. If you want a book that will keep you thinking long after you've read it, get this one. This is a very fine effort, an enjoyable read.



5. An excellent book, a bit scary. This guy would CON anyone. There are a lot of great tips on what I can do to keep my grandfather from being conned.

5 comments about Rescuing Patty Hearst: Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad.

1. I thought this book we tell me something new that I didn't know about mental illness but it didn't really do that.



2. Holman's autobiography of her childhood abuse at the hands of a schizophrenic mother is surprisingly tame: Holman writes with considerable emotional distance, as if she's still uneasy about approaching the memories. This tone makes the book read more like fiction than reality at times. Unlike many memoir writers, Holman talks little about her childhood emotions, instead opting to probe into the "why's" of the events: why her father didn't "save" her from her crazy mother, why Holman herself didn't flee, etc. It makes for an interesting psychological tale. However, by the same token it prevents readers from getting too emotionally tied to the book and its young, suffering Virginia.
   Holman's tactic of switching abruptly back and forth between the present and her childhood also does some major damage to the book's flow. The same goes for the book's structure: Holman divides her story into short chapters, many of them only 2-3 pages long.
   Still, anyone with a relative suffering from a mental illness--particularly illnesses as quirky and unpredictable as schizophrenia, will find a familiar voice in Holman's childhood self and will recognize all too well her adult frustrations with finding logic in the illogical waters of her experiences.



3. When she was eight years old, Gingie was forced to leave town with her mother Molly, a schizophrenic under the delusion that she was needed to set up a makeshift hospital for war children. Molly took Gingie and her baby sister Emma, who was only a year old, to the family's Virginia summer cottage, and for several years, forced Gingie to humor her in collecting supplies, adapting their home and going along with a variety of delusions as she began to descend more and more into the illness.
   
   Meanwhile, Gingie's father remained in the family's original home, visiting on weekends. After he requested a divorce, he told his daughters he couldn't take them, because the law usually ruled in favor of the mothers. That may have been true in the mid-1970s, but what jury could possibly recommend two little girls remain in the custody of a schizophrenic? It seems odd, how the girls' father knew first-hand what they were undergoing, but did nothing to remove them from the situation.
   
   All the while, Gingie keeps thinking of Patty Hearst, the heiress who was kidnapped and found robbing a bank with her captors the previous year. She wonders what really happened to Patty; did she cooperate of her own free will? Was she brainwashed? Did she want to get away? Gingie figures it's not too different from her own situation.
   
   Interspersed between Gingie's recollections are brief comments from the adult Virginia. Although happily married and doing well in life, she's unable to stop thinking about her childhood. Why did it have to happen? If it happened to her mother, well after she entered her thirties and had children, could it happen to *her*?
   
   An intriguing read, giving a vivid picture of life with a mentally ill person in control of the situation...



4. At first when Gingie's mother begins to show signs of becoming delusional, it's a bit like an adventure. Gingie and her sister Emma is one. When their mother, in the early stages of schizophrenia, announces they must be vigilant and look for clues, it seems to Gingie that they are plunged into an exciting world, like Nancy Drew, where anything could mean something important. They walk though the woods, examining the trash they find, and Gingie's mother records everything in her notebook.
   
   Life continues to get stranger and stranger, though. Gingie's mother moves her daughters into their summer cottage and paints the windows black, confiding in her that they have been chosen to create a field hospital for the war orphans who will be arriving any day. For years Gingie endures night maneuvers and quizzes on the contents of the first aid book her mother expects her to learn, so she will be able to help treat the war children.
   
   Despite this weirdness in her childhood, other parts of Gingie's life are remarkably normal. She plays with her cousins who live nearby, attends school and worries about making friends. Nobody seems to be concerned with her mother's increasingly strange behavior.
   
   Although Gingie's experience was worrisome, I didn't get a feeling of urgent danger from her story. She described some of the crazy things her mother did, like refusing to leave their cottage during a flood, or giving her sister a glass of bleach to drink, or, much later, physically attacking Gingie when she was visiting from college, but she didn't give the impression that the situation was dire. I think this made the story less dramatic than it could have been, because the narrator didn't seem overly horrified by the effects of her mother's mental illness.



5. This book chronicles the experiences of one family when the mother develops schizophrenia after giving birth to her second child. Unable to convince the mother to get psychiatric help and without the legal means to force her to do say, the family is instead forced to simply stand by as her delusions slowly take over their mother's life, and, in the process, also their own.
   
   Quote: "I think about this now: I was seen at my worst and loved. Forgiven. This still astounds me. And it makes me want to be kinder to people, more compassionate. I begin to wonder: Can I find a way to forgive my mother for being so sick?"
   
   
   I thought this book was extremely interesting and also very saddening because, as it is written by the family's older daughter, the reader gets a glimpse into how schizophrenia affects both the person who is diagnosed with the condition and the people who love and surround the individual. The daughter finds that she is able to connect with her mother less and less until she is forced to choose between having nothing to share with her mother or being a part of her mother's delusions.

5 comments about A Prison Diary.

1. Prison Diary is, by far, one of the most interesting books I have ever read. While some believe that Archer is egocentric (he does talk about himself quite a bit), I believe this adds importance to the story. Archer was part of the political system, yet he had no idea how horribly the prisons were run. He is now experiencing day to day life in the highest security prison in England. For a first-time offender, that has to be extremely overwhelming! He may complain about his conditions and the ordeals of his daily life, but wouldn't you if you were given a four year sentence for something that should have only gotten community service? His stories of the drug dealings, the prisoners inside the "lifers" wing, and the problems the guards face bring a new insight into prison life. Because Archer was not the "typical" con, everyone felt as if they could talk to him, thus, making this a well-rounded novel on the system. Overall, this is a well-written novel sure to shake things up a bit.



2. What a shock to the system,but what a good read this was as well.To go from the very top to the bottom in one easy lesson!
   Loryn Potroz



3. I actually originally read Volume III Heaven before finding a copy of Volume I Hell and have to say I think Heaven was a lot higher in quality than this book. Heaven is also a lot thicker with a lot more pages. In Volume I Archer shows more of himself through his writing than in the final volume which to be honest makes him a little bit less likeable and harder to relate to. In Heaven you assume he is an average guy (I mean you know he is a rich author and politician) but in Hell he portrays his upper class upbringing and lifestyle and comes across rather snobby at times when talking about his fellow inmates backgrounds or describing his conditions. He will only drink bottled water, can't eat the everyday prison food served at meal times even though there's a menu of three alternatives, had never even heard of let alone eaten Coco Pops (these as the same as Coco Puffs for North Americans) before getting them in a multipack of cereal, and in his opinion they weren't as good as Cornflakes. How he was amazed that drugs can get smuggled in obviously means he had never watched normal TV before in his life.
   
   I found that the empathy I had for Archer in Volume III Heaven I just did not have reading Volume I Hell. Surely he also got some of his friends into trouble and a loss of their privileges or another 28 days added onto their sentences by revealing stuff like one of them who worked in the canteen stole him a bottle of water and passed it through the wire. Even if he uses fake names it is not going to be that hard for prison authorities to work out who it was from the dates in his diary. I'm glad he also got rid of the cricket score updates by the trilogy finale as these were pretty boring.
   
   Saying all that though I still found the first volume of the Prison Diaries an entertaining read and an insightful look into the Class A prisons of Britain which I imagine would have many similarities to ones in Australia, North America and elsewhere. I'm just glad that he improved the diaries by the third volume and I will definitely be checking out Volume II Purgatory.



4. Incredible writing, totally expected of Jeffrey Archer.
   He brings his artisary in fiction into this non-fiction giving you great insight in the lives of prisoners who we all love to think of as bad guys.
   At the end of the book, the inmates are no longer bad guys but regular people who just want to get by with their lives living it as best as they can.
   A definite must read for all lovers of a good book.



5. Absolute drivel, poorly written by an angry ego driven con. The only thing that does come out of this is the state of our prison system, Kudos to our Lordship for at least using his celebratory status to raise this issue. However, come on, if you are going to write about being in prison at least let us know that you were scared to death. He never really talks about what was running through his mind all those hours in lock up. If any of these men, including Fletch, had sat next to him at the theatre he would have called security.

5 comments about Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629.

1. "Directly beneath the disintegrating plane, Harold and Dorothy Heil thought their farm was under attack."
   
   Probably one of the most chilling sentences I've ever read in a book.
   
   The horrific bombing of United Air Lines Flight 629 in Colorado in 1955 is brought vividly to life in "Mainliner Denver." This is one of those "can't put down" reads that will keep you enthralled and wondering what will develop next.
   
   In addition to following the crime, its aftermath, the search for the cause, the trial and its outcome, various subplots develop: the media rivalry between Denver's two major newspapers, each hoping to top the other in coverage; in-fighting between the defense attorneys; and the investigators' shock in discovering that there was no federal statute on the books (in 1955) that made it a crime to blow up an airplane.
   
   John Gilbert Graham, arrested, tried, convicted and ultimately executed for the crime (he blamed an unhappy childhood on his mother -- a passenger on the plane -- and planned to collect on a significant flight insurance policy purchased at the airport just prior to the fatal flight) comes across as a cold, calculating and unremorseful madman ... unmoved by the scope of the disaster and callous in his comments regarding the 43 additional victims, including a 13-month-old boy, who were killed along with his mother when his suitcase-packed time-bomb blew the United DC-6B airliner ("Mainliner Denver") out of the sky. Truly chilling.
   
   Writer Andrew J. Field gives us a vivid, highly detailed of this terrible crime and its impact in a book that enthrall you with its narrative and impress you with its details. Includes photographs and diagrams.



2. I'll just jump in and counter another review that's posted. This isn't sensational "true crime" genre stuff. "Mainliner Denver" stays close to the bone, to the definite, no-questions-asked facts of one of the most stunning acts of violence in Colorado's history and in aviation history. Andrew Field steers clear of speculation and guesswork. The details are well assembled, and the flow is linear. The reader is left to absorb the story just as it unfolded in 1955. I worked with both Al Nakkula and Gene Amole at The Rocky Mountain News so it was fascinating to think back about their roles in this over-the-top story. And Field lays out the issues sparked by this legendary crime with a reporter's deft eye -- cameras in the court, vending machine air travel insurance, luggage screening, and execution mishaps, among others. While Graham wasn't the best planner in the world and made it fairly easy for detectives to piece things together, Field does a terrific job of detailing their investigation and the hurdles they encountered along the way. If you want to read something that draws out complicated theories for Graham's psychological make-up, go elsewhere. "Mainliner Denver" sticks to what we know for sure and, in that way, leaves an even more powerful chill.



3. This book--about a man who blows up an airplane carrying his mother and forty-three other people in order to collect on her insurance policies--should be deeply affecting. It isn't. Instead, it reads like an extended statement of facts opening the opinion of the court in an appellate case. And I gained but little more insight into bomber Graham from reading this book than I did from reading the opinion of the court in his case or the other information about the 1955 crash that's available on the Internet. I didn't expect to find out whether Graham's mother's indifferent childrearing alone turned him into a monster, or whether he was born without a conscience. I did hope to read more of the sort of details that would have enabled me to draw my own conclusions on these issues. Those details aren't there. Graham remains as much a pale outline from the start to the finish of this book as he is in the Pacific Reporter. Even easily supplied biographic details about the main players are missing; for instance, the brief description of Graham's mother's childhood suggests she was an only child, and then we learn many pages later that she had at least one sister who was involved in Graham's life. But the biggest failure of the book, I think, is the complete lack of insight we're given into Gloria Graham, the killer's wife. Did she have low self-esteem? Was she the sort of easily-controlled woman to whom Graham would have been drawn because of his hatred of his mother? We aren't given enough information about Gloria to draw any conclusions about her personality at all; nothing about her background, virtually nothing about her courtship. Fifty years have passed since the disaster; maybe the sort of human details that would have fleshed this into a story worth reading are no longer available, having died with the principals. In that case, maybe this book shouldn't have been written, because I think it contributes but little to anyone's understanding of this event. Very disappointing.



4. Andrew J. Field has done an outstanding job in detailing the notorious case of John Gilbert Graham. In every respect -- research, presentation, writing, and editing -- there is absolutely nothing lacking about "Mainliner Denver". To be sure, Mr. Field doesn't succeed in explaining (or even determining) Graham's motivation. Money? Hatred? Was he, as William Roughead once famously described Lizzie Borden, "unfilial?" Mr. Field doesn't know, but his "failure" is not the result of want of trying.
   
   This is a fast, easy, entertaining, riveting, and informative read. I highly recommend it. Indeed, I would be delighted if Mr. Field would bring his considerable talents to bear in exploring other neglected criminals -- Barbara Graham or Penny Bjorkland, to mention only a couple. I'll keep my fingers crossed -- and so should you.



5. In the "True Crime" section of your favorite bookstore most of the titles involve crimes of recent vintage; the reason being that most buyers of True Crime books will pay for something that's fresh in their mind due to the impact from newspapers and the nightly cable barrage (a la Nancy Grace et.al.). Books involving classic crimes that that stand the test of time due to their impact, horror, or legacy are few and far between. In my previous review of "The Mosser Massacre" I applauded the fact that William Cook's reign of terror was getting it's own book while Howard Unruh's "Walk Of Death" from 1949 and Jack Gilbert Graham's airplane bombing in 1955 were still waiting. Well, while Unruh's "legacy" is still lacking the "treatment", Graham's 1955 bombing of a commercial aircraft finally gets the documentation needed. Full of pictures, interviews and trial transcripts, Andrew Field has come up with a book that covers a classic American crime that had no counterpart before 9/11. More importantly, Field weaves into the impact the crime had on the victims and their relatives (which, unfortunately is too uncommon in true crime literature). Any interested reader in classic American crime will enjoy this book! (Note: for any perspective true-crime authors; along with the before-mentioned Unruh how about a book on 1948 Ohio rampage killers Murl Daniels and John Coulter West?)

No comments about Supper with the Crippens: A New Investigation into One of the Most Notorious Domestic Murders in History.

4 comments about Joe Dogs: The Life & Crimes of a Mobster.

1. the end, when he got a little too enthusiastic about ratting out his old pals. at least the other rats didn't feel so good about it. i guess its cuz they beat him up so bad, (undeservedly, in my opinion); but he still just seemed a little too into the "revenge by law" process that it turned my stomach to read the end of the book, from about the point of "bagging my first boss" onward. it was nauseating. but a decent easy read otherwise



2. This book is good, it does give details of rackets and all the moves that the guys in south florida were making, But if you read this book really well, you notice that Joe dogs was more of their Bitch then a guy they were willing to make a MADE MAN. By reading this book I can that they had no real respect for him, and only dealed with him because he lived down there and it made it easy for them to their business that way, during the hole book the mobsters were always flying back and forth to and from New York. Even the Family advisor did'nt like hime (joe N Gallo) and had him beat down(this is not good). The way Tom Argo talked and treated hime told me that, to them he was just a clown they were using to make a buck and would never make a MADE MAN.
   Good book but more like spider from goodfellas!!
   then donny brasco



3. Although you have to wonder just how much of this story was inflated by Joe Dogs, it still made for a great read. Joe makes no attempts to cover up the fact that he isn't a very good person but just tells his story like it is (with a few possible embellishments) in a way that can only pass for Joe Dogs' style. I have his "Mafia Cookbook" which includes some stories from his life as well.



4. this book is one of the funniest i've read since donnie brasco,not for the fan of shoot em up chop em up mob book.but funny the way joe dogs talks about "empty suits" when refering to FBI agents. The same incompetence donnie brasco found in his undercover work in the bonanno famiglia.good reading,couldn't put it down.