Author : Gene Epstein
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 40,35 MB
Release : 2020-01-06
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1684711363
At age 16, a young Gene Epstein borrowed $50 from his mother to buy a used car, which he then sold the following day, tripling his investment. This event started his extraordinary journey in life. Through twists and turns, Gene experienced a wide variety of alarming, as well as astonishing escapades, which are detailed in this fascinating and hilarious autobiography: "Lemon Juice, The Confessions of a Used Care Dealer - a metamorphosis."
Author : Mark S. Wisniewski
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 19,61 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Polish Americans
ISBN : 9781576500699
Author : Sheldon Norberg
Publisher : Ronin Pub
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 49,74 MB
Release : 2005-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781579510329
For years, author Sheldon Norberg dealt drugs in the pot hills of Northern California. A scholarship-winning student, he dropped out of UCLA in favor of the overpowering lure of the Grateful Dead and counterculture living. Soon Norberg was making deals and doing drugs all the way from Humboldt to Berkeley. Confessions of a Dope Dealer provides an eye-opening, no-holds-barred account of Sheldon's life, but it also provides much more. It's a story of how one man's quest for transcendence blinded him to what he really needed: simple human acceptance. As Sheldon grows, he comes to see himself and his drug-addled life in new ways; this in turn allows him to analyze the cultural myths and values that surround drugs in America, producing a provocative memoir with a take on drugs like none other.
Author : Martin Corona
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 31,83 MB
Release : 2017-07-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1101984627
The true confession of an assassin, a sicario, who rose through the ranks of the Southern California gang world to become a respected leader in an elite, cruelly efficient crew of hit men for Mexico's "most vicious drug cartel," and eventually found a way out and an (almost) normal life. Martin Corona, a US citizen, fell into the outlaw life at twelve and worked for a crew run by the Arellano brothers, founders of the the Tijuana drug cartel that dominated the Southern California drug trade and much bloody gang warfare for decades. Corona's crew would cross into the United States from their luxurious hideout in Mexico, kill whoever needed to be killed north of the border, and return home in the afternoon. That work continued until the arrest of Javier Arellano-Félix in 2006 in a huge coordinated DEA operation. Martin Corona played a key role in the downfall of the cartel when he turned state's evidence. He confessed to multiple murders. Special Agent of the California Department of Justice Steve Duncan, who wrote the foreword, says Martin Corona is the only former cartel hit man he knows who is truly remorseful. Martin's father was a US Marine. The family had many solid middle-class advantages, including the good fortune to be posted in Hawaii for a time during which a teenage Martin thought he might be able to turn away from the outlaw life of theft, drug dealing, gun play, and prostitution. He briefly quit drugs and held down a job, but a die had been cast. He soon returned to a gangbanging life he now deeply regrets. How does someone become evil, a murderer who can kill without hesitation? This story is an insight into how it happened to one human being and how he now lives with himself. He is no longer a killer; he has asked for forgiveness; he has made a kind of peace for himself. He wrote letters to family members of his victims. Some of them not only wrote back but came to support him at his parole hearings. It is a cautionary tale, but also one that shows that evil doesn't have to be forever.
Author : Brian P. Wallace
Publisher : UPNE
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 15,83 MB
Release : 2013-02-12
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 1611683793
Phil Cresta was no run-of-the-mill thief. Mastermind of the legendary Brink's armored truck robbery and a string of countless other high-stakes heists, he stole more than ten million dollars in escapades that often were breathtakingly daring and at times marvelously inventive. The robberies baffled both police and fellow outlaws for decades, and most of the crimes remain unsolved today. Now the open case files of these memorable thefts can be closed as Cresta himself provides the true story on how they were planned and carried out. Born in Boston's North End in 1928, Cresta was raised in an abusive household. He was sent to Concord Reformatory as a teenager, where he learned the craft of picking locks, a skill later honed during stays at the Charlestown and Walpole prisons in Massachusetts. Following the Brinks robbery in 1968, he was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, but eluded the law for five years, living in Chicago under an assumed name. After serving time at Walpole for the Brinks job, Cresta died penniless in Chicago in 1995. Yet shortly before his death, he revealed the full extent of his astonishing capers to coauthor Bill Crowley, a retired Boston police detective. Drawing from their extensive conversations, this riveting page-turner chronicles how Cresta, along with partners "Angelo" and "Tony," pulled off robberies of jewelers, rare coin dealers, furriers, and armored trucks, detailing the meticulous planning that marked his criminal career. Cresta's final accounting is brimming with vivid tales of betrayal, murder, and intrigue as well as a colorful cast of characters, including mob bosses, wise guys, informants, paid "ears," corrupt judges, a Hollywood starlet, and even the Mayor of Chicago. Filled with drama, tension, and humor, this absorbing saga takes the reader inside the dangerous yet exhilarating world of a life dedicated to crime.
Author : Chester Henchen
Publisher : Boolarong Press
Page : 20 pages
File Size : 31,60 MB
Release : 2019-02-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1925877027
Experience the life of a used car dealer and his family as they share triumphs and tragedies on a journey expanding their business in a provincial city. The author has been a car enthusiast his entire life, which sets him apart from his contemporaries. Rare cars purchased from the heart are scattered throughout the story plus serious home renovations and sporting interests.
Author : M.E. Thomas
Publisher : Crown
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 30,43 MB
Release : 2013-05-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0307956660
The memoir of a high-functioning, law-abiding (well, mostly) sociopath and a roadmap—right from the source—for dealing with the sociopath in your life. “[A] gripping and important book . . . revelatory . . . quite the memorable roller coaster ride.”—The New York Times Book Review As M.E. Thomas says of her fellow sociopaths, “We are your neighbors, your coworkers, and quite possibly the people closest to you: lovers, family, friends. Our risk-seeking behavior and general fearlessness are thrilling, our glibness and charm alluring. Our often quick wit and outside-the-box thinking make us appear intelligent—even brilliant. We climb the corporate ladder faster than the rest, and appear to have limitless self-confidence. Who are we? We are highly successful, noncriminal sociopaths and we comprise 4 percent of the American population.” Confessions of a Sociopath—part confessional memoir, part primer for the curious—takes readers on a journey into the mind of a sociopath, revealing what makes them tick while debunking myths about sociopathy and offering a road map for dealing with the sociopaths in your life. M. E. Thomas draws from her own experiences as a diagnosed sociopath; her popular blog, Sociopathworld; and scientific literature to unveil for the very first time these men and women who are “hiding in plain sight.”
Author : Shaun Bythell
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 43,39 MB
Release : 2019-08-29
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1782835393
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Irreverently funny ... kept me giggling all week.' Scotland on Sunday "Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?" Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms. Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices.
Author : Rudolf Hoss
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 22,67 MB
Release : 2012-08-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1616140089
By his own admission, SS Kommandant Rudolf Höss was history's greatest mass murderer, having personally supervised the extermination of approximately two million people, mostly Jews, at the death camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Death Dealer is the first complete translation of Höss's memoirs into English. These bone-chilling memoirs were written between October 1946 and April 1947. At the suggestion of Professor Sanislaw Batawia, a psychologist, and Professor Jan Shen, the prosecuting attorney for the Polish War Crimes Commission in Warsaw, Höss wrote a lengthy and detailed description of how the camp developed, his impressions of the various personalities with whom he dealt, and even the extermination of millions in the gas chambers. This written testimony is perhaps the most important document attesting to the Holocaust, because it is the only candid, detailed, and (for the most part) honest description of the Final Solution from a high-ranking SS officer intimately involved in carrying out the plans of Hitler and Himmler. With the cold objectivity of a common hit-man, Höss chronicles the discovery of the most effective poison gas, and the technical obstacles that often thwarted his aim to kill as efficiently as possible. Staring at the horror without reacting, Höss allowed conditions at Auschwitz to reduce human beings to walking skeletons - then he labelled them as subhumans fit only to die. Readers will witness Höss's shallow rationalizations as he tries to balance his deeds with his increasingly disturbed, yet always ineffectual, conscience.
Author : Peter D. Norton
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 34,23 MB
Release : 2011-01-21
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 0262293889
The fight for the future of the city street between pedestrians, street railways, and promoters of the automobile between 1915 and 1930. Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change.
