Ralph Blumenthal: 4 books

Kurt Tucholsky is one of Weimar Germany's most celebrated literary figures. The poet, journalist, and satirist who was at the center of the tumultuous political and cultural world of 1920's Berlin still emerges as an astonishingly contemporary figure. But he was more than just an angry truth-teller;...

In 1919, Lewis E. Lawes moved his wife and young daughters into the warden's mansion at Sing Sing prison. They shared a yard with 1,096 of the toughest inmates in the world-murderers, rapists, and thieves who Lawes alone believed capable of redemption. Adamantly opposed to the death penalty, Lawes...

The author of Last Days of the Sicilians presents a look into the Mafia in the tradition of Wiseguy and Boss of Bosses. Culled from years of wiretapping, here are the unexpurgated FBI tapes of mobster John Gotti, which reveal in detail how he and his crew commanded the most powerful organized crime...

July 12, 1979: The fearsome Bonanno family boss, Carmine Galante, is gunned down in a gruesome ambush at a Brooklyn restaurant. The hit launches an FBI investigation that soon becomes the largest in the bureau's history, as agents uncover a trail leading to a clandestine arm of the Sicilian Mafia....