Joseph Bruno's Blog, page 15
January 30, 2015
International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno’s “New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” is FREE Today at Kindle Kindle.
That means you get 2 FREE BOOKS for the price of NONE!
New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” is now ranked:
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > True Crime > Hoaxes & Deceptions
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Law Enforcement
January 29, 2015
Book Review – “New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” (Kindle Edition).
It’s quite unusual for a reviewer to review a book on Amazon.com and write a review that is as in depth as the one below on my book “New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” (Kindle Edition).
He only gave me 4 out of 5 stars, but it hardly matters. The time and effort he put into writing this review is certainly gratifying to me and should be helpful to potential readers.
*****
4.0 out of 5 stars The Rotten Core of the Big Apple
By Silver Screen Videos (Atlanta, GA)
This review is from: New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” (Kindle Edition)
For the better part of a century, from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, New York’s Five Points was one of the most poverty and crime ridden parts of the city and the entire United States. Most people today know it, if at all, as the setting for Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.” But Joe Bruno knows the area better than most people since it’s where he hails from and he’s taken the stories he grew up with, added to them the results of a lot of painstaking research, and has come up with a new book, “New York City’s Five Points,” which contains a number of entertaining stories about the area and its most infamous residents and events.
“Five Points” is organized into a series of short chapters, usually two to ten pages in length, each devoted to a particular person, group, or incident, and Bruno’s chapters, for the most part, are arranged in alphabetical order, so they skip around a lot. Readers looking for a comprehensive history of the area will be disappointed, but those looking for fascinating, colorful tales will love this book. Since Bruno is far better at telling colorful anecdotes than organizing a formal history text, his approach, even though it skips around a great deal, is actually fairly effective. In many cases, Bruno probably had little historical information available (some of his chapters deal with events from the 1820s and 30s), so a short chapter provided ample space to tell the story.
The stories are indeed fascinating, starting out with the Chinatown murder of a well known comic that is accomplished by lowering the assassins down the side of a building, in a story that resembles a classic locked room tale but is actually true. I also enjoyed the chapter on Chuck Connors (not the actor, but the unofficial “mayor” of Chinatown), who specialized in taking leading celebrities of the day such as Sir Thomas Lipton on tours of the area, complete with a trip to an “opium den” that was a complete hoax designed to give his upper class guests some cheap thrills. There’s even a far more bizarre story later in the book about a con artist who victimized bunches of people by claiming that the southern end of Manhattan was in danger of falling into the Hudson River due to all the tall buildings that had been built there and that he could “save” the area by cutting off part of it and rearranging the rest.
I should point out that Joe Bruno’s books are not written in conformance with any style book I’ve ever seen. There’s a good bit of colorful slang (boxers “duke it out mano a mano”), and he includes conversations between characters that may or may not have actually occurred. However, I’ve read several of Bruno’s other books and, in this one, he seems to have toned down the language a bit so that it supports his stories rather than distracts from them. Further, since the book is organized in a number of short chapters that read like the telling of a story, Bruno’s colorful language is not nearly as distracting as it might have been in a longer, more formal text on the same subject.
There is some repetition in “Five Points,” as certain events and characters are described in different manners in different chapters, but it’s fairly minimal. However, those who have read some of Bruno’s other books should be aware that some of the material has appeared in what seems to be substantially the same form in some of his earlier work. Nonetheless, there seemed to me to be a good bit of fresh material, including a bonus chapter that really hit close to home, as Bruno talks at length about his Italian-American uncle by marriage who actually was elected mayor of Chinatown in the 1920s and later went to Hollywood. Uncle Johnny’s story is as colorful as those of the considerably seamier characters Bruno discusses in the earlier part of his book.
There’s a lot of fascinating material in almost every chapter of “Five Points.” Further, because most of the stories in the book take place before the days of Prohibition and “big name” gangsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, they will be completely new and refreshing to many readers. After reading “Five Points,” readers will be well aware that organized crime in New York didn’t begin after World War I; it was well established and just as dangerous for a number of decades prior to the Great War. “Five Points” is a good complement to Bruno’s other books on crime in the Big Apple.
International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno’s “Find Big Fat Fanny Fast” is FREE today on Amazon Kindle. Click the link below to grab your FREE copy!
Synopsis: Since the start of the 20th Century, the Italians and Chinese gangsters in the Little Italy/Chinatown area in New York City have endured an uneasy truce. In the first three quarters of the century, the Italian gangs ruled the neighborhood with an iron fist.
But starting in the 1970’s, the dynamics began to change, as more Italians moved out, and droves of Chinese began flowing into Chinatown from China.
This did not bode well for Italian mob boss Tony Bentimova (Tony B), so he enlists the help of his most trusted killer, Big Fat Fanny Fanelli, all six-foot six-inches and six hundred and sixty pounds of her, to ensure the Italians maintain control of all the illegal rackets in Lower Manhattan.
January 27, 2015
International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno has 18 of the top 96 books on Amazon/UK is the category “Best Sellers in True Accounts of Hoaxes and Deceptions.”
“New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” is ranked highest at #2.
Whitey Bulger – The Biggest Rat” is ranked #6.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/5435504031/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_kinc_1_5_last#1
January 26, 2015
Another 5-Star Review for International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno’s ” New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi.” (Kindle Edition)
Really enjoyed the “Five Points.” New York is America’s city,
January 25, 2015
Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: New York City’s Five Points – The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!: Plus FREE Best Selling Book “Mob Rats – Joe Valachi” (Kindle Edition)
Really enjoyed the “Five Points” New York is America’s city. Being brought up 90- miles away, New York was always enticing. But I guess only New Yorkers can truly be a New Yorker. I read “Gangs of New York”. The movie was confusing to follow. But this book dissected the five Points area enough to make it real. And what is New York today is what’s left of the Five Points – working people, descendants of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Middle easterners, etc. Now other city in America has the “ingredients” that New York has. Write some more about the “real” New York.
January 25, 2015
Another 5-star review for International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno’s ” Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 2 – New York City: Plus FREE Bonus Best Selling Book – “Mob Rats – Danny Greene.”
5.0 out of 5 stars New York gangsters 101,
By Clair McCleary – See all my reviews
This review is from: Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 2 – New York City: Plus FREE Bonus Best Selling Book – “Mob Rats – Danny Greene” (Kindle Edition)
“If you want the low down on the villains of 19th/20th century New York, this book is hard to beat. From ingenious scamsters to corrupt politicians feathering their own nest at public expense; police on the pay roll of the Mob; and the tension between the Mob and the Kennedy’s, the facts are more amazing than fiction. The authors deft touch guarantees an entertaining read – at an excellent price too.”
January 23, 2015
January 20, 2015
January 18, 2015
Another 5-star review for International Best Seling Author Joe Bruno’s “MOB RATS – JIMMY “THE WEASEL” FRATIANNO.” This was was posted on Amazon/UK.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great value and a concise insight into the life of a true Mafioso
16 Jan. 2015
By Murray
Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
As with most Joe Bruno books, this is fairly short but contains all the facts and details of the subjects life. I’ve read several of Bruno’s books and they are all great value and very entertaining – straight into the story with no boring intros etc. Jimmy Fratianno is certainly an interesting character and was much higher in the mob than I originally thought. He was a loan shark, an extortionist, a bookmaker and a stone cold killer. He had connections with all the top guys across America from New York to Hollywood and Vegas. He was, at the time he turned, the highest ranking Mafioso ever to turn informant, and all because he got too big for certain higher ups in the organisation who decided they were going to put him out of business with a bullet. Jimmy vowed vengeance and boy did he get it. He started singing and they started shaking!!! This brief insight into his life lead me to buy ‘The Last Mafioso’ written by Ovid Demaris and Jimmy himself which I would thoroughly recommend.
MOB RATS – JIMMY "THE WEASEL" FRATIANNO
