TALES OF TREACHERY
Frank Costello ran the Genovese crime family, controlled Tammany Hall, and bankrolled the Enquirer. Then things started unraveling.
Ronald K. Fried's fourth book, Frank Costello: A Novel, will be published in December.
A GENUINE ARTIST
The two-time Oscar winner (for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard”) was brilliant and childlike in the best sense.
Mr. Late Night
“There was that sense of…I’m trying to avoid using the word inferiority in his case.”
BIG BOSS MAN TIMES TWO
The Tesla tycoon isn’t a raging antisemite, but otherwise, there’s industry-shattering innovation coupled with self-serving duplicity, hardheartedness, and a loathing for unions.
POISON AT THE SOURCE
As Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece hits the half-century mark, it’s time we stared a little harder at the men the film celebrates. Because heroes they’re not.
can you do that?
The author talks to The Daily Beast about his latest novel, “Inside Story,” where fictional characters bump into the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Anna Wintour.
BULLY OF THE TOWN
Greenwich Village was the Genovese family’s backyard, so of course the mob had a hand in every extra-legal enterprise, starting with bars that catered to gay patrons.
FLAWS AND ALL
The heavyweight champion was admirable in many ways, but he was no plaster saint, says his latest biographer, and we do our hero no favors by refusing to confront his flaws.
BLOODY TRAIL
John J. Binder is an assiduous—and often contrarian—historian of the gang wars that plagued Chicago, and in a new book he sets the record straight on just who shot whom and why.
KINDRED SPIRITS
The Donald is a little like Nixon, a little like John Gotti, but more than anyone, he resembles the father of the modern Mafia, Lucky Luciano, another legend in his own mind.