No comments about The Outlaw's Story.

5 comments about A Matter of Time: A True Story.

1. This is an unbelievable true story. Few books are written from the inmate's perspective. It is a "must read" for all, especially anyone in or retired from law enforcement



2. I couldn't put the book down! What an amazing story about how someone got trapped at the dark side and couldn't get out, even when he wanted to. His description about life in jail made me feel like I was trapped in there right next to him. If you know people who are at the edge of being thrown in jail, give this book to them, and Don's story may scare them into turning their lives around.
   
   I had the privilege to meet the author in person. He is the most humble, laid-back, and friendly person I've ever met. If you enjoy this book, please come back and write a nice review here.



3. This is a story about a man who after reaching bottom decides to dig out. But not alone, not just himself. He decides to dig out as many others he can.
   
   Written in a fast paced, Robert Loodlum-speed drama, this book takes the reader through the life of Don Kirchner, from one struggle to the next, reaching the very bottom, but with an ultimate triumph at the end. A true story, and as another reviewer pointed out, an instant classic.



4. I met Don Kirchner almost 5 years ago when he handed me his most current draft of the book. I couldn't put it down. I was thrilled with the drama and action of his true story. Being a pilot myself I was intrigued with the danger and suspense involved in the flying aspect of the tale. The further I read, the more I was remined of how delicate and tenious our lives really are. Don's ability to deal with and overcome these challanging situations is what impresses me most about "A Matter of Time". This book is a great read and I highly recommend it.



5. What a trip! No one could imagine what prison is like without reading this...and how the author grew and evolved during this experience is nothing short of inspiring. This book is written in such a compelling manner that I felt like I was living it myself. In addition to the joy, love, fear and the gamut of emotions experienced, I came away with a lesson about how we create the manner in which we experience our lives in a way that I could easily adapt to my own life. Of course, it kept me up several nights since I read it word for word so that I could hear and feel what I was reading. I feel that this book will become a classic.

5 comments about "The Gold Club" the Jacklyn "Diva" Bush Story: How I Went from Gold Room to Court Room.

1. WHEN I READ THE BACK COVER OF THE BOOK IT SAID THE READER WOULD FIND OUT ABOUT THE OCCURENCES OF PROFESSIONAL BALLPLAYERS ACTORS AND POLITICIANS INSIDE THE GOLD CLUB. BUT WHEN I READ THE BOOK I QUICKLY LEARNED THAT SHE KEEPS ALL OF THESE PEOPLE NAMELESS EXCEPT FOR HERSELF AND FORMER GOLD CLUB EMPLOYEES. AND WHEN A CELEBRITY DOES ENTER THE CLUB SHE REFERS TO THEM AS A BIG SPENDER WITHOUT EVEN GIVING YOU A DECENT CLUE WHO THEY ARE. I KNOW THAT PEOPLE READING THIS BOOK ARENT NEARLY AS INTERESTED IN FINDING OUT ABOUT JACKLYN "DIVA" BUSH AS THEY ARE IN THE CELEBRITY ESCAPADES THAT WENT ON IN THE CLUB. BE CAREFULL BECAUSE THIS BOOK ISNT GONNA TELL YOU ANYTHING AS FAR AS THATS CONCERNED.



2. THE GOLD CLUB" THE JACKLYN"DIVA" BUSH STORY: HOW I WENT FROM GOLD ROOM TO COURT ROOM details her life as a dancer and her time spent on trial. This book was very interesting and educational. I learned that stripping is more than undressing; it's an art that has been parlayed into big business. At times the story was a bit confusing and hard to follow because Ms. Bush kept switching between past and present. Still it was an entertaining, eye opening read.

   Reviewed by Simone A. Hawks
   of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

   Complete review can be found on our website...




3. This was a wonderful portrayal of one woman's experience and perspective as an entertainer at the Gold Club, and, as the subtitle indicates, it is also about Ms. Bush's life. There is nothing sleazy or ghetto about this book.

   Ms. Bush is an example of a survivor. She cleverly integrated chapter snapshots of her past as though reflecting, at times, on her hard upbringing or comparing how far she had come from her deprived past. It doesn't take a Ph.D to follow and appreciate the creative flair she incorporated. I certainly would not have been interested in this story had she depicted it frame-by-frame from infancy to adulthood. This is a well-written story (I think all of the negative comments are from those fellow dancers she mentioned who didn't like her).

   Ms. Bush doesn't claim to be perfect, in fact, in the end, she states that it is her hope that others can learn from her mistakes.

   I especially recommend this book for young women who may be tempted by notions of making fast money.

   Thanks for sharing your story, Ms. Bush. You've shown that one is never too old to learn from mistakes or develop a new chapter in life.




4. Although I have not read the entire contents of this book I read enough for it to give me a pounding headache because it is indeed very painful to read. Who published this book? Jerry Springer Publishers.

   Being an exotic dancer myself and a very intellegent one at that I was embarassed that the stripper community has been so badly misrepresented by Ghetto Queen.

   This book is not only badly written, it is a big joke. This book has very little value. I would not even use it for a coaster.

   Barbee




5. I bought this book because I knew some of the people involved in the GOLD CLUB. The book lacks professionalism throughout. Yes I realize that DIVA was not well educated but it looks like someone could have put this book together better. I guess I just expected more. I can not imagine the book holding the interest of anyone outside of the Atlanta area where we saw so much about the Gold Club on the news. To sum up this book in one word.......SLEAZE.

5 comments about Mafia Kingpin.

1. I have many unanswered questions about this story. How much is fact and how much is fiction? The book reads like a novel. But it says: The True Story of Sonny Gibson. Okay, there is a character mentioned when Sonny is in Chicago. His name is Sam, the mob chief of Chicago. Is this Sam Giancana? The last name was changed to Scrozelli, I think. Why would he change the last name of a true story? I can understand changing maybe one or two, but every mafia member?
   
   The book talks about Sonny's friend, whose name is Nick. This is someone Sonny knew from Indiana. Nick's grandfather is a New York Mafia don. The name was changed. Which head of the five families was it? We are talking the early 1960's. Carlo Gambino? Joe Bonanno? Vito Genovese? Joe Colombo? or Tommy Lucchese?
   
   The book talks about Nick being murdered, and Sonny was asked to find the people who murdered him. Now Nick was the grandson of the New York mafia don, the boss of bosses. Again, all names were changed. Is this fact or fiction? This is supposed to be a true story. This happened in Carlo Gambino's family, when Gambino asked John Gotti to make a hit on someone who murdered a member of his family.
   
   The book tells us, Sonny went to prison in 1973. He has a former bodyguard visit him in prison three years later, and told him the New York mafia don was dead. This would be 1976. Carlo Gambino died in 1976.
   
   So is the mafia don, Carlo Gambino? If you research the Gambino family or the other families, you can't find any information on Sonny Gibson. You would think, since he was a made man, you could find out which family he worked for. The book mentions he met the boss of bosses of the mafia. Who sent him to Sicily to learn the mafia ways. Is this fact or fiction?If it's fact you can't find information on which crime family he worked for in the beginning.
   
   The book also mentions, the mafia was involved in the death of Marilyn Monroe. And, Sonny helped Elvis Presley in Las Vegas. Sonny had the connections to help Elvis work in Las Vegas again. Since Elvis had stopped performing in public. At that time all hotels were controlled by the mafia. Is this fact or fiction? If you read the Elvis books, you can't find where the name Sonny Gibson was mentioned.
   
   
   I'm not saying the book is not a true story. But you can't verify many of the stories.
   
   If it's a true story some of the book you could verify.



2. I don't know where all the 5-star reviews for this book originated from, but I guess everyone is entitled to their own particular opinion. For me, this book was a massive waste of time and paper. Sonny Gibson has been pretty convincingly exposed as a con-man and charlatan, so I suppose some of this might work as one man's self-aggrandizing fantasy of what he imagines the Mafia is like. (...) Most of it is just ridiculous and/or boring. If you want Mafia fantasy, stick with books like Puzo's "The Godfather." Better yet, read a book that deals with the reality of organized crime, written by an author like Nicholas Pileggi or George Anastasia. What it comes down to, for me, is this- there are so many good books out there to read and only a limited number of hours in a lifetime to read them, so why subject yourself to works like this?



3. I READ "MAFIA KINGPIN" FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 1983, DURING MY SENIOR YEAR IN HIGH SCHOOL, FOR A PROJECT I WAS ASSIGNED TO DO ON THE SUBJECT OF ORGANIZED CRIME. I HAVE READ THE BOOK MANY TIMES SINCE THEN, AND I FIND IT NO LESS EXCITING THAN THE FIRST TIME I READ IT. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK. BY FAR AND AWAY IT IS ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITES. TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT! FAST-PACED, EXPLICIT, GRAPHIC, YOU-CAN'T-PUT-IT-DOWN!

   BUT WHATEVER BECAME OF SONNY GIBSON? I UNDERSTAND THAT HE MADE A MOVIE IN 1988 WITH REPARATA MAZZOLA, HIS CO-AUTHOR ON "MAFIA KINGPIN," BUT ASIDE FROM THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOVIE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE OF HIS LIFE IN CRIME, AND HIS TRANSFORMATION TO CHRISTIANITY? IS HE STILL AN ACTOR? DOES HE HAVE A WEB SITE (IF HE DOES -- I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO FIND IT), AN EMAIL ADDRESS? WHATEVER BECAME OF SONNY GIBSON? DOES ANYONE OUT THERE KNOW? IF YOU HAVE INFO, FEEL FREE TO TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT @ my email address: SCHAGHY@ISD.NET

   THANKS, TED




4. It was one the best books i've read. It is graphic but after you get over that it's GREAT!!! I all most cried when he left Angelo. I wasn't able to put it down.



5. The book was very graphic and accurate. I had the misfortunate to grow in the same type of environment and was exposed to the same lifestyle. The ways of the world and Satan are cruel masters. It's a continuing miracle I didn't have to pay the same price as Sonny Gibson did.

4 comments about OKLAHOMA TOUGH: MY FATHER, KING OF THE TULSA BOOTLEGGERS.

1. Required lots of research. Glad this information will be available for future generations.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   g



2. Absurd Realist poet, translator, and memoirist Ron Padgett, long ensconced in New York's East Village boho Beat & Existentialist milieu, turns to his roots in this tale of Tulsa folklore circling around his father, Wayne Padgett; King of the oil town's bootleggers. The Tulsa time of this wiley tale is somewhere 'tween boom & bust. The earliest reaches extend back two generations to Padgett's granddad Grover, though only briefly touching upon Teddy Roosevelt's trust busters and the populist ferment brewing against BIG OIL. Padgett barely mentions the Tulsa race riots in passing.

   Oklahoma was a "dry" state when it came to hootch, but oil lease rigs were still dripping when Wayne Padgett came of age. Though there isn't much of Osage tribal flamboyance on display, as Ron Padgett hews closely to his dad's immediate territory. Terry Wilson's book on the Osages and their visibility in and around Tulsa during the boom years can fill in some of the local composition. Ironically Wilson deploys an absurdist deadpan in chronicling the Osages, close as an academic can come to the style Ron Padgett pioneered earlier in his career writing Beat memoirs & punchline poetry. Wilson cinematically captures the new oil heirs on their joyrides into town having assimilated silk top hats, tux and tails into their tribal regalia. Padgett is challenged with a central subject dry as the Protestant work ethic he embodied, illicit work notwithstanding. Despite the Dixie Mafia contacts and some compulsive gambling that plays out in tragic ways a bit up the family tree, the Padgetts seemed to be straight shooters, with only narrator Ron betraying much of an appetite or curiosity for life lived on the wild side.

   The contrasts found within the House of Padgett are the stuff of cross-pollinated literary dreams. Imagine Elmore Leonard or his fictional hardboiled characters holed up in a tornado alley Plains safehouse with Burroughs adding-machine heir and stiff-lipped Wild-side explorer William Burroughs, as this Tulsa teen scene deftly sketches in. Ron Padgett recalls his fledgling effort at publishing an underground lit journal while still in high school and working out of bootleggin' dad's house:

   "But the oddity of the larger situation dawned on me only years later: at one end of our house was the office of one of the biggest whiskey businesses in town, while at the other was the 'office' of an avant-garde literary magazine. Really, though, I was simply imitating my dad: I had my office desk, I operated a cottage industry, and I pursued a project that most people would have considered bizarre. But what was truly bizarre was that Daddy was reading Beat and Black Mountain poetry." Wild-eyed ecstasy chasing visionaries such as Ted Berrigan, er rather, a private eye hired by Berrigan's squeeze's proper parents, might stop by the house looking for the literary mentor, only to be gruffly chased off by Big Daddy. How did a high school junior out in the oil & red dirt provinces manage to net a cast of literary luminaries like LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Paul Blackburn, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Ron Loewinsohn, Clarence Major, Gilbert Sorrentino and Berrigan for his WHITE DOVE REVIEW 5x8 1/2 staple job? Just neighborhood luck to have buddy Joe Brainard hangin' out as Art Director. The same Joe Brainard whose too short career retrospective was being exhibited at top tier museums of modern art from Boston to Berkeley a year or so ago. But this is Wayne's story, a different sort of exemplar of Junior Achievment in action.

   Don't be put off by the title OKLAHOMA TOUGH. Turns out the subtitled: "My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers" is a tender and flavorful slice of regional folklore. Virtually every minor character does a star turn, burning some bit of colorful essence onto a reader's retina. From the penitentiary cameo by old school toughs like Jew Snyder, to the more fully fleshed out complex shades of modern men-in-the-making like Bobby Bluejacket, the bedrock matriarch Verna Padgett, and the younger generation roadhouse loves from whom off-the-cuff wisdom literature flows in Ron Padgett's interview tapes, one only wishes this memorable Tulsa tale included an index. If this ever makes it to the big screen I have no suggestions for the casting of King Wayne or Boho Scribe Ron. But the soundtrack wouldn't be complete without some ol' J.J. Cale-Leon Russell seductive shuffles, Jimmy LaFave dustbowl retreads and the Red Dirt Rangers' roadhouse stomps.




3. A very well written story that depicts an unique individual living in an intriguing time and place. Wayne Padgett is a compelling and contradictory man, some one I would like to get to know. Reading this book is like having a conversation with this powerful figure.



4. This gripped me from beginning to end: a very finely drawn portrait of a man of unusual quality. Anyone who's ever been drawn to the "outlaw" mystique will appreciate the opportunity to see how it begins, lives, and ends in Wayne Padgett, the author's father. A terrific read.

2 comments about Smokescreen: One Man Against the Underworld.

1. What a tale. Tight and beautifully told. Smokescreen is a real insight into the the world of criminal activity in Canada. Certainly one of the great books about smuggling. On a par with Howard Mark's Mr Nice.



2. Collaboratively written by Paul William Roberts and Norman Snider, Smokescreen: One Man Against The Underworld is the true story Carl Broeker, an ordinary businessman who was betrayed by his partner and forced to confront a deadly, blacklist world of organized crime and illicit trafficking. Drawn into undercover work with the Secret Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Broeker found himself caught up in a deadly thrill ride of lies, deceits, crime in this compelling biographical narrative of international crime lords, illegal smuggling operations, and political corruption. Smokescreen strips away the subterfuge and lays bare the heretofore murky underworld or organized crime on both sides of the Canadian/American border.

No comments about Tales of the Emerald Triangle: Memoirs of a Marijuana Grower.

5 comments about Death at Every Stop: The True Story of Alleged Gay Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan the Man Accused of Murdering Designer Versace (St. Martin's True Crime Library).

1. All of the other reviews for this book really hammer it as the worst true crime book in the world. But if you do the research, many of the other reviewers do not have much credibility since they have only reviewed one book. While it has some flaws, I would suggest the book is not that bad.
   
   The account of Andrew Cunanan is concise. Even with a 260 page count, the chapters are short and have an average of three pages in between chapters. That being said, the facts are largely accurate. While the author does take some liberties, such suggesting Cunanan asked for a glass of water before shooting Lee Miglin, the fabrications are not sensational.
   
   Some of the things I really liked about the book were Clarkson's research into Cunanan's obsession with Tom Cruise. Additionally, Cunanan met Lisa Kudrow and may have targeted her for the future after her rebuffs. Before this publication, little has been documented about Cunanan meeting Gianni Versace over a year before killing him. Also, the author documents Cunanan's stormy childhood and carosel of relationships.
   
   Certainly the book is concise but serves as a good introduction to interested readers. In other words, I hope they will write better books about Cunanan than this, though "Death at Every Stop" is adequate.



2. This books chronicled the life and crime spree by Andrew Cunanan 1997. Motives and triggers were investigated by interviews with family and friends to explore what may have drove this person to commit these truly sick crimes. Cunanan's life was further looked into, covering his above average intelligence, Constant chameleon-like appearance changes and desire for the "high life." He was a habitual liar who told many different people many different things. It is very likely that a major precipitating factor to this killing spree was that Cunanan thought he was HIV Positive. However, this is now disputed as false that he ever though he was hiv positive. Angered at his presumed fate he turned against the world and people. An autopsy on him after he took his own life revealed he was negative. One can read this book quickly.

   The author would describe what Cunanan would do, and what he would think, while he was all by himself. Does this author have ESP, or has he been channeling with Cunanan. Perhaps he hired a psychic. This is a book that had to be thrown out as quickly as possible after the media hype to cash in on it. So take if for what it is: synopses of a killing Spree that needed more depth.




3. This book was the only book on Cunanan for a time. It reads like a hurriedly put-together book to cash in on the Cunanan frenzy created after the murder of Gianni Versace. I wondered how the author was able to get into Cunanan's head during his killing spree, and this tended to fictionalize the book. A more in-depth book on the Cunanan case is needed in order for the reader to get a better understanding of it.



4. The author has falsified a life for Andrew Cunanan--a life mostly unsubstantiated by any facts. The bombastic writing seems intended to shock--but is there anyone who's going to read this who is as shocked (and unknowledgeable) about gays as Wensley Clarkson? His ham-fistedness is amusing at times in its over-the-top, 1950s style moralism and it's pathetic efforts to shock. To wit, here's Clarkson on "San Francisco's gay population": "The city overflowed with nightlife in the early 1990s. But it was a labyrinthine in the extreme, with a very serious sadomasochistic community, a body piercing epidemic, and a lot more besides." Also, his assumption that Cunanan was HIV-positive has been proven false by the twice-leaked autopsy report. (The rumor was begun by an unscupulous San Diego AIDS counselor. Fie on him.)



5. This guy ought to be sued by The Washington Post for his word-for-word article rip-offs. You'd think he spoke with Cunanan via some channeler of the dead by the way he gives the intimate details of Andy's thoughts and motives. But I must say, it's chock full of delerioiusly scandalous rumors regurgitated as fact, nearly all of them undocumented, unnamed sources -- "a close friend" and "a famous hollywood star." This book has been a great source of inspiration for my own web site about Andrew -- but honestly, I couldn't even finish the whole thing, because it drags on worse than the 21-word title.

No comments about Insanity: My Mad Life.

1 comments about Who Killed Polly?: The True Story Behind the Abduction and Murder of Polly Klaas (Who Killed Polly?).

1. I read this book and would not recomend this book to any one. This book is a self published book, and the auther go's off on his own ideas as to what really happened to the precious Polly Klaas. The auther also jumps around so much in this book it is hard to stay attached to the book.