
Smalltime
A Story of My Family and the Mob
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Narrated by:
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Russell Shorto
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By:
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Russell Shorto
Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a city in its brawny postwar prime, is where Little Joe Regino and Russ Shorto build a local gambling empire on the earnings of factory workers for whom placing a bet - on a horse or pool game, pinball or Tip seal - is their best shot at the American dream. Decades later, Russell Shorto grew up knowing that his grandfather was a small-town mobster but never thought to write about him, in keeping with an unspoken family vow of silence. Then a distant cousin prodded him: You gotta write about it.
Smalltime, the story of Shorto's search for his namesake, delves into the world of the small-town mob, an intricate web that spanned midcentury America, stitching together cities from Yonkers to Fresno. A riveting immigrant story, Smalltime is also deeply personal, as the author's ailing father, Tony, becomes his partner in piecing together their patriarch's troubled past.
Moving, wryly funny, and richly detailed, Smalltime is an irresistible memoir by a masterful writer of historical narrative.
©2021 Russell Shorto (P)2021 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















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Johnstown Resident
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I do not understand why I need to pad the review with more words!
Good story….
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Great historical read of Johnstown's own LCN
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Greatest book I've both read and listened to
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Great rendition of a family and small city
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Very Different Mob Story
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Must listen. Incredible story
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It spends an inordinate amount of time as more or less a family narrative, and maybe not as much about organized crime per se as one would like, but it’s absolutely worth the listen.
As a result of listening to this, I’ll probably listen to other historical narratives by the author.
A very interesting take on a very American story
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As I trained as a writer, though, the interwoven memoir/history structure intrigues me. Shorto seems to have struck a balance between interesting, solid research and carefully revealing his own families’ intergenerational lessons.
I loved the history of Sicily’s relationship to Italy and the details of Italian immigration experiences. I had never understood the “No Italians” references culturally beyond the general hostility members of each wave of immigrants displayed towards the next one. My enjoyment and appreciation of this story are linked by my own Johnstown family beginning its American chapter in the same decade and location as Shorto’s, by way of Ellis Island. The writer and I came of age in the same era, so I relished the pictures he painted. He evoked an era through my senses. Well done.
Brilliant balance of memoir and history!
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Fascinating look at the mob
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