Havana Nocturne

In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars & flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar & often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.

An award-winning journalist and historian offers the complete story of how the Mob infiltrated Havana in the 1950s, made a fortune--and lost it all to Fidel Castro. 16-page b&w photo insert.

“A mob saga that has it all—brotherhood and betrayal, swaggering power and glittering success, and a Godfather whose reach seems utterly unrivaled. What a relentless, irresistible read.” —Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Border A fascinating, cinematic, multigenerational history of the Cuban mob in the US from "America’s top chronicler of organized crime"* and New York Times bestselling author of Havana Nocturne. By the mid 1980s, the criminal underworld in the United States had become an ethnic polyglot; one of the most powerful illicit organizations was none other than the Cuban mob. Known on both sides of the law as "the Corporation," the Cuban mob’s power stemmed from a criminal culture embedded in south Florida’s exile community—those who had been chased from the island by Castro’s revolution and planned to overthrow the Marxist dictator and reclaim their nation. An epic story of gangsters, drugs, violence, sex, and murder rooted in the streets, The Corporation reveals how an entire generation of political exiles, refugees, racketeers, corrupt cops, hitmen, and their wives and girlfriends became caught up in an American saga of desperation and empire building. T. J. English interweaves the voices of insiders speaking openly for the first time with a trove of investigative material he has gathered over many decades to tell the story of this successful criminal enterprise, setting it against the larger backdrop of revolution, exile, and ethnicity that makes it one of the great American gangster stories that has been overlooked—until now. Drawing on the detailed reporting and impressive volume of evidence that drive his bestselling works, English offers a riveting, in-depth look at this powerful and sordid crime organization and its hold in the US.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In October 1946, Luciano, who had been deported from the United States just seven months earlier, traveled to Cuba. He was there to meet his childhood friend and longtime criminal associate Meyer Lansky. #2 Luciano and Lansky visited Cuba, where they had lunch at the Grand Hotel. They were there to celebrate Luciano’s early release from prison and his deportation to Sicily. He had been irate that he had been deported to Sicily, as he had no intention of staying in Italy. #3 Luciano spent two weeks in Havana, meeting with associates and visiting the sites he used to know so well. He was able to relax for the first time in ten years. He had breakfast in bed, and then walked around his estate and supervised the four gardeners as they planted flowers. #4 Luciano was in Havana waiting for the Mob to arrive for their planned empire in Cuba. He spent his time either cultivating political connections or enjoying the many sensual pleasures Havana had to offer.

Dramatic account of the pre-revolution era in Cuba, describing the culture of casinos, cabarets and drugs on an island frequented by Hollywood celebrities and infamous Mafia bosses. Mafia in Cuba is a tale of corruption and organised crime, where politicians are sold to the highest bidder and where real power lies with the Mafia and other US interests. Enrique Cirules uses both Cuban and US sources to document the intertwined relationships between Washington, the Mafia and the pre-revolution governments in Cuba.

In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the violent division of the Cuban nation.

Throughout the 1950s, as the Cuban people laboured under a violently repressive regime, the Mob-financed revelry in Havana never stopped. Tourists from around the world flooded in to gamble, go to the racetrack, see an elaborate floorshow at the Tropicana, hear some of the hottest music around and perhaps partake in the kinky sexual activities that flourished on the fringe of the most colourful and exciting nightlife scene of the twentieth century. It may have seemed like fun and games, but for the Havana Mob it was a deadly serious business. Led by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano - and with the full compliance of President Fulgencio Batista - the Mob set out to create a financial empire that would rival the 'glory days' of Prohibition in the US. For a time, the plan seemed to be succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, but they were sowing the seeds of their own demise. Behind the scenes, Fidel Castro was building opposition to what he portrayed as the debauchery and corruption of capitalism run amok in Havana - the result was revolution. The Havana Mobcaptures a unique and exotic chapter not only in the history of organised crime but also in the history of the United States, and for the first time the story is told through interviews and the first-hand accounts of those who were actually there.

What should we make of the outsized role organized crime plays in conflict and crisis, from drug wars in Mexico to human smuggling in North Africa, from the struggle in Crimea to scandals in Kabul? How can we deal with the convergence of politics and crime in so-called 'mafia states' such as Guinea-Bissau, North Korea or, as some argue, Russia? Drawing on unpublished government documents and mafia memoirs, James Cockayne discovers the strategic logic of organized crime, hidden in a century of forgotten political--criminal collaboration in New York, Sicily and the Caribbean. He reveals states and mafias competing - and collaborating -- in a competition for governmental power. He discovers mafias influencing elections, changing constitutions, organizing domestic insurgencies and transnational terrorism, negotiating peace deals, and forming governmental joint ventures with ruling groups. And he sees mafias working with the US government to spy on American citizens, catch Nazis, try to assassinate Fidel Castro, invade and govern Sicily, and playing unappreciated roles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis.