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The Zoot Suit Riots
- The History of the Racial Attacks in Los Angeles During World War II
- Narrated by: Kenneth Ray
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
"Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters, the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ran up and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy." — Carey McWilliams, journalist.
Even enemies will agree that the United States is a unique nation, in that its culture has been developed almost entirely by immigrants—people who have come to the country from other places and carved their way into society. Sometimes called a melting pot, sometimes a tossed salad, the nation has been shaped by all that is good and bad of the people who live here. Sadly, history has taught that where there is immigration, there will always be conflict. Just as any newly married couple will argue over whose family to spend the holidays with, so those coming from different nations and cultures will clash over which traditions can be integrated into the new society and which ones must be left behind. One might think that after some 400 years of dealing with these issues, the nation would have mastered the subject, but instead the opposite seems true. In the early days of 2016, Americans were engaged in a heated presidential campaign fraught with rhetoric and fear over the role of immigrants in the United States. Candidates frequently spoke out against certain cultures, insisting they are dangerous to the American economy or even national security.
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Story
In Paddy Whacked, best-selling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and seemingly untouchable Southie legend.
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First Half - 4 Stars - Second Half - 2 Stars
- By Lulu on 08-29-16
By: T. J. English
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By Hands Now Known
- Jim Crow's Legal Executioners
- By: Margaret A. Burnham
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Margaret A. Burnham challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in harrowing cases between 1920 and 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system of the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the line from slavery to the legal structures of this period—and through to today.
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Heartbreaking
- By sharon on 11-24-22
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The Blood of Emmett Till
- By: Timothy B. Tyson
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Mississippi, 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by a white mob after making flirtatious remarks to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Till's attackers were never convicted, but his lynching became one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history. It launched protests across the country, helped the NAACP gain thousands of members, and inspired famous activists like Rosa Parks to stand up and fight for equal rights for the first time.
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Tough read. Rest in Peace Emmit. We are so sorry!
- By Melanie B on 09-16-18
By: Timothy B. Tyson
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Beale Street Dynasty
- Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis
- By: Preston Lauterbach
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life.
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Narration Speed...It's Half the Battle
- By B. Westman on 03-21-17
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Panic
- Bloodlands collection
- By: Harold Schechter
- Narrated by: Steven Weber
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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During the Depression, economic anxieties found an outlet in a series of child murders that triggered an irrational nationwide hysteria: pedophiliac psychopaths were overrunning the country. As America was brought to rage and fury by the press and the FBI, lynch mobs took to the streets, reason gave way to doomsday scenarios, and one father was even driven to murder his three daughters to “save them” from a degenerate crime wave. A terrifying cautionary essay, Panic explores the combustible mix of unfounded fears, moral crusades, and the dangers of collective thinking.
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Too sensational
- By Texaspaz on 10-14-20
By: Harold Schechter
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Undisclosed Files of the Police
- Cases from the Archives of the NYPD from 1831 to the Present
- By: Bernard Whalen, Philip Messing, Robert Mladinich
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 175 years of true crimes culled from the city's police blotter, told through an insightful text by two NYPD officers and a NYC crime reporter. From atrocities that occurred before the establishment of New York's police force in 1845 through the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 to the present day, this audio is an insider's look at more than 80 real-life crimes that shocked the nation, from arson to gangland murders, robberies, serial killers, bombings, and kidnappings.
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Good History of Crime in NYC
- By Bob Shinders on 03-10-17
By: Bernard Whalen, and others
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City of Scoundrels
- The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
- By: Gary Krist
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World". But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place.
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Great History of a Great City
- By Cookie on 08-30-12
By: Gary Krist
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Red Summer
- The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America
- By: Cameron McWhirter
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.
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Better Understand 2019 by Looking Closely at 1919
- By JAS on 03-27-19
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American Mafia
- A History of Its Rise to Power
- By: Thomas Reppetto
- Narrated by: Paul Costanzo
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Organized crime - the Italian American kind - has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise - from the 1880s to the post-World War II era - that is as exciting as it is authoritative. Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia.
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Mob at its best
- By Thomas on 02-14-23
By: Thomas Reppetto
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Satan's Circus
- Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.
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New York, N.Y
- By Robert on 07-11-07
By: Mike Dash
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Nemesis
- One Man and the Battle for Rio
- By: Misha Glenny
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Nemesis is the story of an ordinary man who became the king of the largest slum in Rio, the head of a drug cartel, and perhaps Brazil's most wanted criminal. It's a gripping tale of gold hunters and evangelical pastors, bent police and rich-kid addicts, quixotic politicians and drug lords with math degrees. Traversing through rain forests and high-security prisons, filthy slums and glittering shopping malls, this is also the story of how change came to Brazil.
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Amazing sobriety
- By Fabio Azeredo on 04-29-16
By: Misha Glenny