It's Just the Way It Was
Inside the War on the New England Mob and Other Stories
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Narrated by:
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Frank Clem
About this listen
In It's Just the Way It Was, Joe Broadmeadow and Brendan Doherty take you inside the investigations, covert surveillance, and murky world of informants in the war against organized crime. Make no mistake about it. It was a war targeting the insidious nature of the mob and their detrimental effect on Rhode Island and throughout New England.
Indeed, the audiobook reveals the extensive nature of organized crime throughout the United States. From the opening moments detailing a mob enforcer's near-death in a hail of gunfire to the potentially deadly confrontation between then detective Brendan Doherty and a notorious mob associate Gerard Ouimette, this book puts you right there in the middle.
Most books on the mob tell a sanitized story of guys who relished their time as mobsters. As Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguys put it, "Most mob books are the egomaniacal ravings of an illiterate hood masquerading as a benevolent godfather." This is not that kind of book. This is the story of the good guys. It's just the way it was.
©2019 Joe Broadmeadow (P)2020 Joe BroadmeadowListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
From burglary to armed robbery and murder, infamous bad guy Frank Cullotta not only did it all, in Cullotta he admits to it - and in graphic detail. This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro's gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta's was a world of high-profile heists, street muscle, and information - lots of it - about many of the FBI's most wanted.
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Great story, silly narrator
- By Tom Mainella II on 04-20-15
By: Dennis N. Griffin, and others
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Gotti's Rules
- The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia
- By: George Anastasia
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The notorious Gotti family is the stuff of mob legend. The "Dapper Don", John Gotti Sr., and his son John A. "Junior" Gotti ran New York's powerful Gambino crime family and were well known for their flamboyant style and brutal ways, an image perpetuated in popular Mafia mythology. John Alite, a mob hit man, associate, and close friend of the Gottis, has a very different story to tell.
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Garbage read
- By Ray on 09-02-15
By: George Anastasia
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Mob Rules
- What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman
- By: Louis Ferrante
- Narrated by: Louis Ferrante
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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As an associate of the Gambino family, Ferrante relied on his instincts to pull off some of the biggest heists in US history. By the age of 21, he had netted millions of dollars for his employers. His natural talent for management led Mafia bosses to rely on him. After being arrested and serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence, Ferrante went straight. He realized that the Mob's most valuable business lessons would allow him to survive and thrive in the real world.
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Business Without Order Is A Business Doomed To Fail
- By Fabrice76718 on 05-15-24
By: Louis Ferrante
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Where the Bodies Were Buried
- Whitey Bulger and the World That Made Him
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author T. J. English, the acclaimed master chronicler of the Irish Mob in America, offers a front row seat at the trial of one of the most notorious gangsters of all - Whitey Bulger - and pulls back the veil to expose a breathtaking history of corruption and malfeasance.
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The post-trial story of the Bulger legacy
- By Hugh F on 09-28-15
By: T. J. English
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Operation Family Secrets
- How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family
- By: Frank Calabrese Jr., Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman, and others
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Calabrese family of Chicago is a close-knit, middle-class, multi-generational Italian-Irish-American clan. They operate family businesses. They work day and night striving for the American Dream. All three sons forge a bond with their controlling father, Frank Sr., and their soft-spoken favorite uncle, Nick. As a boy, the oldest son, Frank Jr., realizes that his father and uncle are also "made" members of another close-knit family: the outfit.
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Riveting Listen!
- By ahippieadventure on 02-06-13
By: Frank Calabrese Jr., and others
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Gaspipe
- Confessions of a Mafia Boss
- By: Philip Carlo
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the boss of New York's Lucchese crime family, was a Mafia superstar, responsible for more than 50 murders. Currently serving 13 life sentences at a federal prison in Colorado, Casso has given journalist and New York Times best-selling author Philip Carlo the most intimate, personal look into the world of La Cosa Nostra ever seen.
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The author fails the objectivity test
- By William on 11-29-08
By: Philip Carlo
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The Kosher Capones
- A History of Chicago’s Jewish Gangsters
- By: Joe Kraus
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kosher Capones tells the fascinating story of Chicago’s Jewish gangsters from Prohibition into the 1980s. Author Joe Kraus traces these gangsters through the lives, criminal careers, and conflicts of Benjamin “Zukie the Bookie” Zuckerman, last of the independent West Side Jewish bosses, and Lenny Patrick, eventual head of the Syndicate’s “Jewish wing.”
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Kind of scattered
- By joey carbo on 10-04-21
By: Joe Kraus
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Gangsters of Harlem
- The Gritty Underworld of New York City's Most Famous Neighborhood
- By: Ron Chepesiuk
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Ron Chepesiuk chronicles the little known history of organized crime in Harlem.
African American organized crime has had as significant an impact on its constituent community as Italian, Jewish, and Irish organized crime has had on theirs. Gangsters are every bit as colorful, intriguing, and powerful as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, and have a fascinating history in gambling, prostitution, and drug dealing. In the late 1800s, Harlem became a highly fashionable neighborhood.
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weak --reader is terrible!
- By Meyer Rosenbloom on 10-18-13
By: Ron Chepesiuk
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The Tangled Web
- The Life and Death of Richard Cain—Chicago Cop and Mafia Hitman
- By: Michael Cain
- Narrated by: Clinton Wade
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Tangled Web tells the dramatic story of detective Richard Cain's criminal career as revealed by his half-brother, Michael. Cain led a double-life—one as a well-known cop who led raids that landed on the front pages, and the other as a "made man" in one of Chicago's most notorious mob families.
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Reviews
- By G. D. Hoppe on 11-19-20
By: Michael Cain
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Street Warrior
- The True Story of the NYPD’s Most Decorated Detective and the Era That Created Him
- By: Ralph Friedman, Patrick Picciarelli
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Two thousand arrests. One hundred off-duty arrests. Six thousand assists. Fifteen shootings. Eight shot. Four kills. These are not the performance statistics of an entire NYPD unit. They are the record that makes Detective 2nd Grade Ralph Friedman a legend.
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My favorite so far
- By Scott Armstrong on 09-01-20
By: Ralph Friedman, and others
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Killer Triggers
- By: Joe Kenda
- Narrated by: Joe Kenda
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The most common triggers for homicide are fear, rage, revenge, money, lust, and, more rarely, sheer madness. This isn’t an exact science, of course. Any given murder can have multiple triggers. Sex and revenge seem to be common partners in crime. This book offers my memories of homicide cases that I investigated or oversaw. In each case, I examine the trigger that led to death. I chose this theme for the book because even though the why of a murder case may not be critical in an investigation, it can sometimes lead us to the killer.
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Joe Kenda is always fun.
- By Jackson Theofore Keys on 03-10-21
By: Joe Kenda
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Marked for Life
- One Man's Fight for Justice from the Inside
- By: Isaac Wright Jr., Jon Sternfeld - contributor
- Narrated by: Isaac Wright Jr.
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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An empowering memoir of courage and hope in the face of injustice—and the basis for the ABC television show, For Life—Marked for Life is the true story of Isaac Wright Jr.’s battle to win his freedom after being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit, and a critical indictment of America’s judicial system.
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Outstanding Book!
- By JXL on 06-10-24
By: Isaac Wright Jr., and others
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The Mob and the City
- The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York
- By: C. Alexander Hortis
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Forget what you think you know about the Mafia. After reading this book, even life-long mob aficionados will have a new perspective on organized crime. Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s.
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Hard one to rate....
- By Jeffery D. Giuliani on 09-24-20
What listeners say about It's Just the Way It Was
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kayla Burgess
- 06-08-22
Rhode Island Mob Story
I really enjoyed the book. my only gripe is the narrator mispronounced so many different names and places...And consistantly saying "omerta" as "O-mer-RAHT-ha" was pretty funny for a mafia book. But overall good book. Read it.
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- Derek
- 03-09-20
Disappointed
Narration was horrible. So many mispronunciations it made it hard to listen to. The story jumps in and out of first person narration creating a confusing follow. The story is extremely choppy. It does not follow a timeline or natural progression. One chapter has nothing to do with the next.
I grew up on the RI / MA border during this time period and had really high hopes for the book. Stuck it out until the end and wish I didn’t.
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3 people found this helpful