Thomas Hunt's Blog, page 4

Armed rebellion in 1874 New Orleans

Busy weekend... I neglected to post about the 139th anniversary of the so-called "Battle of Liberty Place."

The event is dealt with in detail in Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia. Macheca, a captain in the conservative Democrat White League, played a pivotal role in the battle against Louisiana's carpetbagger Republican state government.

Read more on the Deep Water blog

Amazon and Barnes&Noble

DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime softcovers (as well as e-books) have come online at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. We're expecting the hardcover format to appear shortly.

Visit Amazon for softcover and Kindle e-books

Visit Barnes and Noble for softcover and Nook e-books

Re: I didn't write those

Took a while and a few requests, but Goodreads was kind enough to remove the I-Property and Ballet-related books from my author profile. (They were written by SOME Tom Hunt, just not THIS Tom Hunt.) The books list looks a little skimpy now. I'll have to do something about that.

More Buffalo mobster bios

We've added brief biographies of Buffalo Mafia leaders John Montana and Rosario "Roy" Carlisi to the website. (Click on a name to view the corresponding writeup.)

Underworld biographies on DiCarlo book site

In addition to the biography of "Jew Minnie" Clark mentioned earlier in this blog, our website for DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime includes writeups on these individuals linked to the Mafia of western New York:
- Salvatore "Sam" Pieri,
- Frederico "Lupo" Randaccio,
- Joseph Fino,
- John Cammilleri,
- Daniel Sansanese, Sr.,
- Pasquale "Pat Titters" Natarelli, and
- Isadoro Crocevera.

Civil War black market and Macheca

150 years ago today (Aug. 28, 1863), Joseph Macheca of New Orleans was tried and convicted in a Union military occupation court in connection with a scheme to steal and sell barrels of U.S. Army pork and beef.

Shortly after his conviction, Macheca left New Orleans for Texas, where he reportedly engaged in smuggling. He later returned to New Orleans with a small fortune.

Often erroneously labeled America's earliest Mafia boss, Macheca was in fact a strong patron of the fledgling Mafia (though never its boss and probably never a member).

Read more here.

Apple offers DiCarlo e-books

Looks like our DiCarlo biography has cleared the approval hurdles at Apple. E-books of both volumes are now available through the Apple iTunes bookstore. You can visit the bookstore through your favorite Apple device of use the links provided on our website.
We hope the e-books will soon be available through Barnes and Noble as well. (That bookseller offers the same e-book format but has a separate approval process.)
The Amazon Kindle version of the e-books has been available for some time already. You can preview/purchase those through these links:
Volume I.
Volume II.

The Life of "Jew Minnie" Clark

Widely known in Prohibition Era western New York as "Jew Minnie," Minnie Leventhal was an eastern European immigrant to the Buffalo area who associated with some powerful organized criminals and ran speakeasies and hotels. Minnie was believed to have been romantically involved with both Buffalo crime boss Giuseppe DiCarlo and his son Joseph DiCarlo. We have added a biography of Minnie Clark to the DiCarlo book website: http://buffalomob.blogspot.com/2013/0...

I didn't write those

Goodreads has taken some visible steps to eliminate the confusion over which books I have actually written. They apparently accepted my argument that I did not author a defense of the London charter (published in the 17th Century) or the manual for young farmers. Unfortunately, my relatively common name continues to cause some confusion, and my book list still includes "At the Ballet: On Stage, Backstage" and a couple of books related to "Iproperty." While these may be excellent books (I'm seriously intrigued to find out what goes on backstage at the ballet, aren't you?), they are not my books.

DiCarlo available (or soon will be)

DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime is now available for purchase in hardcover, trade paperback and e-book formats for Kindle and Nook/iBooks. Well, sort of. Whether it is available to you at this moment depends in large part on where you are looking for it. Purchase links to the current sellers (basically the publisher's bookstore, though Amazon is carrying the Kindle version) are available on the book website, buffalomob.com, along with plenty of interesting information about the book and its authors.

Due to the nature of the book-catalog process, it could be another month or so before DiCarlo appears in Amazon.com (as I mentioned, the Kindle version is there already) or Barnes and Noble. As I understand it, the ISBN information needs to be circulated, the distributor needs to manually update a database and then booksellers need to update their databases and each update is performed on a monthly basis ... whatever.

There is an additional wrinkle involved with the Nook and iBooks EPUB-format e-books, as those must be individually authorized before they can go on sale through B&N and the Apple store. I don't really know what they do to authorize books or how long it takes, and I'm trying my best not to be in any way critical of the EPUB Ministry of Acceptable Books (guess I just failed). I am assured that the process has begun and must be content with that information.

Bottom line is this. If you want DiCarlo now, it is available in all formats through the limited channels shown on the website. If you want to buy it through your favorite seller, you may need to wait just a bit longer (should be there long before Christmas!). That's the book-biz.