The Elusive Purple Gang


Book Description

The Elusive Purple Gang: Detroit's Kosher Nostra is a concise history of one of America's most notorious Prohibition gangs. The Burnstein brothers and their associates were the only Jewish gang in the United States to dominate the rackets of a major American city. From their meteoric rise to the top of Detroit's underworld to their ultimate demise, this is an episodic account of the Purple Gang's corrosive pursuit of power and wealth and their inevitable plunge towards self-destruction.




Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang


Book Description

Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang is a photographic history of one of the most notorious organized crime groups of the 20th century. The photographs chronologically follow the evolution of the Purples from their days as a juvenile street gang through their rise to power and eventual self-destruction. Using rare police department mug shots and group photographs, the book transports readers through the dark side of Prohibition-era Detroit history. Detroit had a gold rush atmosphere and a thriving black market during the 1920s that attracted gangsters and unsavory characters from all over the country.




The Purple Gang


Book Description

The Purple Gang - Detroit's ruling organised crime syndicate - became one of the most notorious gangs during the Prohibition Era. The gang was comprised mostly of the offspring of recent immigrants - Eastern European Jews who were hardworking and honest. This vicious gang quickly rose to power by engaging in extortion, gambling and the illicit trade of drugs and alcohol. The book if graphically illustrated with 32 pages of photographs depicting the gangsters, from their lives on the street to their bloody demise.




Terror in Ypsilanti


Book Description

Between the summers of 1967 through 1969, a predatory killer stalked the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan seeking prey until he made the mistake of killing his last victim in the basement of his uncle's home. All-American boy John Norman Collins was arrested, tried, and convicted of the strangulation murder of Karen Sue Beineman. The other murders never went to trial, with one exception, and soon became cold cases. With the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, hundreds of vintage newspaper articles, thousand of police reports, and countless interviews, Fournier tells the stories of the other victims, recreates the infamous trial that took Collins off the streets, and details Collins's time spent in prison.




Paper Fan


Book Description

For 14K Triad official Steven Wong, faking his own death to escape trial was easy. But evading investigative reporter Terry Gould -- impossible. For 11 years terry Gould has tracked the man known as the “paper fan” through the organized crime circles of six countries. This riveting, horrifying, yet often hilariously funny book is the story of that search, a daredevil journey through the seductions and terrors of Steve’s world. Steven Wong is the “paper fan,” a thirty-nine-year-old Hong Kong-born mobster. Raised in New York’s Chinatown, he matured into crime in Vancouver, where he founded and headed the murderous Gum Wah Gang in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In 1992, Wong “died” in a traffic accident in a remote area of the Philippines before he could be sent to jail for heroin trafficking, conveniently just after he’d taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy. His urn may still be interred in a Vancouver cemetery, but today, Interpol has a “Red Alert” arrest warrant out for Wong, and his updated file reads like a Hollywood action film -- a post-mortem panorama of organized criminal adventure that circles the Pacific Rim, from Macau to Japan, from Cambodia to the Philippines. Gould’s search takes him into a world in which politicians, police, businessmen and criminals sprint along in one big pack, sometimes nipping each other’s heels, sometimes licking each other’s faces, and sometimes inviting one another back home for all-night mah-jong parties. Forced to work according to right-side-up rules, honest cops haven’t had a chance of arresting Steve in his upside-down world. Four times, Terry Gould has traced Steven Wong through Asia’s circles of corruption and pinned him down, but the law has let him slip away. Fifth time lucky? “Gangsters are good team players who generally exhibit a locker-room familiarity with other men. Still, it surprised me when Steve answered the door on Monday wearing only his polka-dot boxers, showing off his biceps and his chest tattooed with the winged dragons and sharp-taloned eagle. He was talking on the phone and barely interrupted himself as he turned back into the house, whereupon I realized that the display was likely done on purpose. Neck to waist his back was totally covered by a stylized tableau of a dragon crawling against a background of tigers and flowers — a Triad montage no one outside his syndicate world was supposed to see.” -- from Paper Fan




Detroit Time Capsule


Book Description

Detroit Time Capsule is a collection of seventy-five articles that first appeared as Fornology.com blog posts. The original posts have been revised and re-edited for inclusion in this anthology. Topics vary from significant historical events to biographical profiles of people who left their mark on Detroit history. Although this collection can be read from beginning to end, most chapters are self-contained with no narrative thread binding them. This eclectic collection makes a great springboard for readers interested in learning more about Detroit's rich past.




The Danger Gang and the Pirates of Borneo!


Book Description

Ronald Zupan is a daring master adventurer! But he actually hasn't experienced any grand adventures . . . YET! When his world-traveling parents are kidnapped on his twelfth birthday, Ronald seizes the chance to prove himself with a dazzling, danger-defying rescue operation. Teaming up with his trusty butler Jeeves, his quick-witted fencing nemesis Julianne Sato, and his pet cobra Carter, Ronald sets course for the jungle of Borneo where his parents were last sighted. If they can crash-land a plane and outrun a hungry snow leopard, surely they can find the secret lair of Zeetan Z, the world's most ruthless pirate! But as their adventure becomes more and more dangerous, can Ronald and his companions muster enough courage to see this adventure through?




Pink Panthers


Book Description

SYNOPSISIn "The Greatest Thieves in the World", the author Neboysha Saikovski mixes urban drama with a crime thriller in this global action-adventure novel about diamond robberies. The result is an adventurous book in which the personalities of the main characters and global criminal syndicates are thoroughly analyzed, the action is shown in abundance through all the chapters, and the scenes of diamond robberies are especially spectacular.After the thieving team of the Pink Panthers successfully carried out three large diamond robberies in Antwerp, London, and Tokyo, they are recruiting an elegant logistics expert and a top make-up artist to prepare for the robbery at the Diamond Biennale in Paris. After successfully completing the job in Paris, they carry out two more spectacular robberies together, at the Amsterdam airport and in Saint Tropez, after which discord and attrition occur within the gang over the division of the loot. If there is no reconciliation, the rest of the gang is forced to forgather and train a new crew for another robbery, this time in Dubai.A WORD TO THE READERDiamond. A symbol of strength, durability, value, success, happiness, and love.Imagine the world you know as one side of the street, where diamonds on display in expensive urban neighborhoods of the world's metropolises evoke a desire for wealth, fame, and, above all, a desire for power.Young people from the former Yugoslavia, as well as the heroes of this book, did not have the opportunity to enjoy their youth like their peers, to play basketball or football in the playground in their neighborhood. They did not have the opportunity to meet that glamorous side of the street where diamonds shine. The god of war seduced some of them into his ranks, to shed the blood of those they called brothers until yesterday, while others sought salvation in that dazzling world until they met again while creating the world's most powerful gang of diamond robbers.You, holding this book in your hand, you likely walk down that street where everything is beautiful, happy, and great. If you have the courage, dare take the step together with our heroes. Cross the street and meet the dark world behind all that glitter and glow. Find out how diamonds are made and come to that array of glittering shops and the blood, sweat, and tears that they represent in reality.From the hot sands of Africa where greedy corporations exploit human and mineral resources in collaboration with corrupt politicians, through shining modern Europe all the way to Dubai, embark on an action-adventure with our heroes, the Pink Panthers, and personally experience the world's most famous diamond robberies.If you want to know what it's like to be a Pink Panther, read this book. As well as if you are interested in how the flows of money and the destiny of diamond robbers intertwine with the interests and activities of drug cartels and human trafficking, the white-collar crime of banking and corporate magnates, and diplomatic-political machinations.One thing is guaranteed.For those of you who read this book, the world will never look the same again.AUTHOR'S NOTEThis novel is the first part of a trilogy that deals with the socio-historical context of emergence, rise, and (temporary) fall of the famous and powerful international robber group, Pink Panthers, created in the whirlwind of war during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. In close-up are the Pink Panthers characters, their principles, a system of work and organizational structure, tactical patterns of action and logistical processes, described through the example of adventures in preparing and carrying out robberies in Antwerp, London, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, St. Tropez and Dubai. The background story shows the entire process of the diamond business, from relentless exploitation of rich deposits of poor third-world countries to the intertwining of the diamond business with other criminal cartels.




We Are Not Such Things


Book Description

Justine van der Leun reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class—a gripping investigation in the vein of the podcast Serial “Timely . . . gripping, explosive . . . the kind of obsessive forensic investigation—of the clues, and into the soul of society—that is the legacy of highbrow sleuths from Truman Capote to Janet Malcolm.”—The New York Times Book Review The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa: The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, 1993, during the final, fiery days of apartheid by a mob of young black men in a township outside Cape Town. Her parents’ forgiveness of two of her killers became a symbol of the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. Justine van der Leun decided to introduce the story to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn’t the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the murder actually responsible for her death? And then van der Leun stumbled upon another brutal crime committed on the same day, in the very same area. The true story of Amy Biehl’s death, it turned out, was not only a story of forgiveness but a reflection of the complicated history of a troubled country. We Are Not Such Things is the result of van der Leun’s four-year investigation into this strange, knotted tale of injustice, violence, and compassion. The bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath—and the story that emerges of what happened on that fateful day in 1993 and in the decades that followed—come together in an unsparing account of life in South Africa today. Van der Leun immerses herself in the lives of her subjects and paints a stark, moving portrait of a township and its residents. We come to understand that the issues at the heart of her investigation are universal in scope and powerful in resonance. We Are Not Such Things reveals how reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgment of the past, a lesson as relevant to America today as to a South Africa still struggling with the long shadow of its history. “A masterpiece of reported nonfiction . . . Justine van der Leun’s account of a South African murder is destined to be a classic.”—Newsday




The Elusive Quest for Growth


Book Description

Why economists' attempts to help poorer countries improve their economic well-being have failed. Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work. In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people—private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors—respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.