Smalltime : A Story of My Family and the Mob Paperback / softback
by Russell Shorto
Paperback / softback
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Description
Best-selling author Russell Shorto, praised for his incisive works of narrative history, never thought to write about his own past.
He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence.
Then an elderly relative prodded: You're a writer-what are you gonna do about the story?
Smalltime is a mob story straight out of central casting-but with a difference, for the small-town mob, which stretched from Schenectady to Fresno, is a mostly unknown world.
The location is the brawny postwar factory town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The setting is City Cigar, a storefront next to City Hall, behind which Russ and his brother-in-law, "Little Joe," operate a gambling empire and effectively run the town.Smalltime is a riveting American immigrant story that travels back to Risorgimento Sicily, to the ancient, dusty, hill-town home of Antonino Sciotto, the author's great-grandfather, who leaves his wife and children in grinding poverty for a new life-and wife-in a Pennsylvania mining town.
It's a tale of Italian Americans living in squalor and prejudice, and of the rise of Russ, who, like thousands of other young men, created a copy of the American establishment that excluded him.An urgent and intimate exploration of three generations of the American immigrant experience.
Smalltime is a moving, wryly funny and richly detailed memoir by a masterful writer of historical narrative.
Information
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In Stock - low on stock, only 1 copy remainingFree UK DeliveryEstimated delivery 2-3 working days
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:288 pages, 8 illustrations
- Publisher:WW Norton & Co
- Publication Date:29/03/2022
- Category:
- ISBN:9781324020172
Other Formats
- EPUB from £13.29
Information
-
In Stock - low on stock, only 1 copy remainingFree UK DeliveryEstimated delivery 2-3 working days
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:288 pages, 8 illustrations
- Publisher:WW Norton & Co
- Publication Date:29/03/2022
- Category:
- ISBN:9781324020172