City of Bad Men


Book Description

Fast Lawrence Shaw is enjoying some solitude for a change-but it's sorely disrupted when an elite businessman asks him to defend his mining venture. A counter-offer comes from the Cut-jaw gang, who'd like to seize the operation. And Shaw will have to play a deadly balancing act between the two...




Bad City


Book Description

"Pringle’s fast-paced book is a master class in investigative journalism... when institutions collude to protect one another, reporting may be our last best hope for accountability." —The New York Times For fans of Spotlight and Catch and Kill comes a nonfiction thriller about corruption and betrayal radiating across Los Angeles from one of the region's most powerful institutions, a riveting tale from a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who investigated the shocking events and helped bring justice in the face of formidable odds. On a cool, overcast afternoon in April 2016, a salacious tip arrived at the L.A. Times that reporter Paul Pringle thought should have taken, at most, a few weeks to check out: a drug overdose at a fancy hotel involving one of the University of Southern California’s shiniest stars—Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the head of the prestigious medical school. Pringle, who’d long done battle with USC and its almost impenetrable culture of silence, knew reporting the story wouldn’t be a walk in the park. USC is one of the biggest employers in L.A., and it casts a long shadow. But what he couldn’t have foreseen was that this tip would lead to the unveiling of not one major scandal at USC but two, wrapped in a web of crimes and cover-ups. The rot rooted out by Pringle and his colleagues at The Times would creep closer to home than they could have imagined—spilling into their own newsroom. Packed with details never before disclosed, Pringle goes behind the scenes to reveal how he and his fellow reporters triumphed over the city’s debased institutions, in a narrative that reads like L.A. noir. This is L.A. at its darkest and investigative journalism at its brightest.




The Spirits of Bad Men Made Perfect


Book Description

This remarkable biography and edited diary tell the story of William Ellis Jones (1838–1910), an artillerist in Crenshaw’s Battery, Pegram’s Battalion, the Army of Northern Virginia. One of the few extant diaries by a Confederate artillerist, Jones’s articulate writings cover camp life as well as many of the key military events of 1862, including the Peninsula Campaign, the Second Battle of Manassas, the Maryland Campaign, and the Battle of Fredericksburg. In 1865 Jones returned to his prewar printing trade in Richmond, and his lasting reputation stems from his namesake publishing company’s role in the creation and dissemination of much of the Lost Cause ideology. Unlike the pro-Confederate books and pamphlets Jones published—primary among them the Southern Historical Society Papers—his diary shows the mindset of an unenthusiastic soldier. In a model of contextualization, Constance Hall Jones shows how her ancestor came to embrace an uncritical veneration of the army’s leadership and to promulgate a mythology created by veterans and their descendants who refused to face the amorality of their cause. Jones brackets the soldier’s diary with rich, biographical detail, profiling his friends and relatives and providing insight into his childhood and post-war years. In doing so, she offers one of the first serious investigations into the experience of a Welsh immigrant family loyal to the Confederacy and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Civil War–era Richmond and the nineteenth-century publishing industry. Invitingly written, The Spirits of Bad Men Made Perfect is an engaging life-and-times story that will appeal to historians and general readers alike.




Tales of Badmen, Bad Women, and Bad Places


Book Description

Presents twenty-one true stories and legends about outlaws in Texas history, including such famous and lesser-known figures as Bonnie and Clyde, Judge Roy Bean, John Wesley Hardin, the Yokums of the Big Thicket, and the Papworths of Erath County.




The Boxing Filmography


Book Description

The love affair between boxing and Hollywood began with the dawn of film. As early as the days of Chaplin, the "boxing film" had assumed its place as a subgenre, and over the decades it has taken the forms of biographies, dramas, romances, comedies, and even musicals and westerns. Such well known pictures as The Champ, Body and Soul, Don King: Only in America, Girl Fight, The Irish in Us, The Kid from Brooklyn, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Raging Bull, each of the Rocky movies and When We Were Kings are just a few examples of the feature films included in this filmography. Thoroughly researched, this work examines 98 boxing films from the 1920s through 2003. Each entry provides basic filmographic data (the film's studio, its genre, its length, cast and credits); a detailed synopsis of the film; illuminating commentary on the boxing sequences; and excerpts from contemporary reviews. Most entries also summarize the making of the film, with particular attention to the training of the actors for the boxing scenes. The filmography also includes information on studio publicity releases and advertisements, press books and exhibitor campaign materials for each film.




A City of Bloodsuckers


Book Description

This novel is a work of fiction, and the characters are all fictional—that is, they come out of my imagination. But if they bear any resemblance to specific judges, lawyers, and cops, it is not a matter of coincidence. It is because I chose to use such names for them to get mad, the same way I am mad about the injustice done to me by three judges for a crime I cried and swore I did not commit. I was charged and found guilty even though I was the one who was assaulted and battered—an assault and battery that has now partially left me deaf and, above all, has left me with only one testicle, while the judges and the attorneys have played their games right. I also created this fictional event of the court. I have used names that came out of my imagination to represent all the players in this book, and I put them in chapters where they are meant to serve my purpose the same way three notorious judges all served their purpose against me. But I should make it clear, though, that the names of the noncourtroom players whom I have used here are products of my imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Therefore, the actions and motivations of these players are entirely my idea. Again, simply put, there is no connection in the manner I brought them into the book. If I have caused embarrassment to anyone other than some judges I have directed my anger to or the attorneys, the security men of Circus Circus Hotel & Casino, and the cops, in any manner, I wish, here and now, to apologize openly and sincerely. And bear in mind that without the humanities—with the novelists, playwrights, poets, and actors of our world, let alone the comedians to express the First Amendment or mock those who wrong us or who rule the world—we would not have movies or theaters. Therefore, all the movies we might think we have would be worth nothing. Ogbebor K. Ogbesia November 8, 2001




Willful Monstrosity


Book Description

Taking in a wide range of film, television, and literature, this volume explores 21st century horror and its monsters from an intersectional perspective with a marked emphasis on gender and race. The analysis, which covers over 70 narratives, is organized around four primary monstrous figures--zombies, vampires, witches and monstrous women. Arguing that the current horror renaissance is populated with willful monsters that subvert prevailing cultural norms and systems of power, the discussion reads horror in relation to topics of particular import in the contemporary moment--rampant sexual violence, unbridled capitalist greed, brutality against people of color, militarism, and the patriarchy's refusal to die. Examining ground-breaking films and television shows such as Get Out, Us, The Babadook, A Quiet Place, Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, and The Passage, as well as works by key authors like Justin Cronin, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, Margo Lanagan, and Jeanette Winterson, this monograph offers a thorough account of the horror landscape and what it says about the 21st century world.




Turner Classic Movies Presents Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide


Book Description

The definitive guide to classic films from one of America's most trusted film critics Thanks to Netflix and cable television, classic films are more accessible than ever. Now co-branded with Turner Classic Movies, Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide covers films from Hollywood and around the world, from the silent era through 1965, and from The Maltese Falcon to Singin’ in the Rain and Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Thoroughly revised and updated, and featuring expanded indexes, a list of Maltin’s personal recommendations, and three hundred new entries—including many offbeat and obscure films—this new edition is a must-have companion for every movie lover.




OUTLAWS: TALES OF BAD GUYS WHO SHAPED TH


Book Description

The people who pushed west were mostly ordinary folks, the guts of the young United States, tough, ambitious, hardworking, and anxious to leave the world better for their kids than it had been for them. Those who did not come of that hardy stock did not last. With them came the trouble-makers, to everybody’s sorrow. Some of them were already running from the law someplace else. Others were simply dishonest, looking for a time and place to blossom into full-blown hoodlums. Some of the young people emulated them: there was some illusory swagger in being a hoodlum, witness the nicknames they carried around . . . many of which they had invented themselves, a sort of phony glory. This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously bad bad guys caught in the act of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, includes famous names like the Dalton gang, lesser known bandits like Kaiser Bill Goodman, and many more. The book will include archival illustrations and photographs of the shady characters and the scenes of their crimes.




The Struggle for Existence


Book Description