Mountain Mafia

MOUNTAIN MAFIA IS A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLACK HAND AND MAFIA in the Rocky Mountain region. It brings to life some of the more colorful leaders in the West's organized crime operations throughout the 20th century, including Roma, Colletti, and the Smaldones. Especially examined is the famous court case of "Scotty" Spinuzzi, who was acquitted of murder "because no one saw the bullet leave the gun." Also mentioned is the connection these western mobsters had with notorious crime members in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

 In the summer of 1930, two federal prohibition agents were murdered. The first died in a hail of buckshot on a dark street in Aguilar, Colorado. Six weeks later, the second agent and his vehicle disappeared on a sunny afternoon along a New Mexico state highway south of Raton. During their fifty-year search, the authors sought answers to why no one was ever prosecuted for these crimes. This is the first book to correlate the two murders, identify how and why they occurred, and name the parties involved and the roles they played. Drawing from first-hand interviews and National Archives files, this book lifts the shadows along the trail as the light of truth is shown upon this mystery. Two federal agents can now rest in peace.

This second edition of “Sustainable Mountain Development” is a history of the development of mountain environmental awareness from its origins during the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1973. This provided intellectual input into UNESCO’s MAB Programme, especially MAB-6 (Impact of Human Activities on Mountain Environments), The International Geographical Union’s commission on mountains, and The United Nations University’s (UNU) mountain project, the latter initiated in 1978. All this research and intellectual activity saw its maturation during the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. The major document universally agreed upon was AGENDA 21, with Chapter 13 concentrating on mountain environmental problems which led to 2002 being dedicated as The International Year of Mountains, and December 17th as International Mountain Day. The research that inspired this book, accompanied by intensive environmental and political activity, was initially propagated by a small group of colleagues that ultimately expanded to a world-wide endeavour. The work was recognised by three awards of the King Albert Gold Medal, two RGS Gold Medals, approved by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and countless other awards. It led to the founding of the International Mountain Society in 1980 and its quarterly journal “Mountain Research and Development” (1981). The work expanded into subsequent research efforts, including specific assessments of projected major catastrophes such as the status of the potential outbreak of glacier lakes (GLOFs), the impacts of climate warming, and incorporation of the mountain subsistence men and women whose environmental knowledge was enthusiastically recognized. This edition provides a new epilogue, which outlines the considerable changes to world environmental assessment since the establishment of 2002 as the International Year of Mountains, and notes that 2022 has been designated as the International Year of Sustainable Mountain Development.

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.

A “blunt, bold debut memoir” of women’s lives on an army base and the intimate hardships of war and deployment on this community (Kirkus) Raised as an army brat, Angie Ricketts though she knew what she was in for when she eloped with Darrin – then an Infantry Lieutenant – on the eve of his deployment to Somalia. Since then, Darrin, now a Colonel, has been deployed eight times, serving four of those tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Ricketts has lived every one of those deployments intimately – distant enough to survive the years apart from her husband, but close enough to share a common purpose and a lifestyle they both love. With humor, candor, and a brazen attitude, Ricketts pulls back the curtain on a subculture many readers know, but few will ever experience. Counter to the dramatized snapshot seen on Lifetime's Army Wives, Ricketts digs into the personalities and posturing that officers' wives must survive daily – whether navigating a social event at the base, suffering through a husband's prolonged deployment, or reacting to a close friend's death in combat. At its core, No Man's War is a story of sisterhood and survival. As Ricketts states: "We tread those treacherous waters together. Do we sometimes shove each other's heads underwater for a few seconds? Maybe even on purpose? Of course. Are we sometimes dragged underwater ourselves by the undertow created by all of us struggling together too closely? Without a doubt. But we never let each other drown. Our buoyancy is our survival."

Unsnagged By: Kak Akstock I first saw Charna Galt, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, when she hurried into the adult bookstore I was already inside. She was obviously hiding from someone, but as she hid, a roomful of lecherous eyes tripped her exhibitionism switch. I abetted those eyes, and her libido, by chugging further down that spur with her. At that first most-memorable sexual experience, she was an eighteen-year-old high school senior and I was a Marine vet with two Vietnam tours on my resume, ten years older. Despite the age gap and snags placed by families, the Mafia, the police, societal norms, sexual fantasies, and my best friend and roommate, Richard Feynman, who also fell in love with Charna, we unsnagged. The love and sex made the action and conflict involved in the unsnagging worth the effort.

From 1922 to 1931, Pete and Sam Carlino controlled the flow of Prohibition alcohol from southern Colorado to Denver before their empire suffered a gruesome, bloody demise. The brothers battled their own kin in the Danna family to secure southern Colorado's bootleg liquor territory. Dozens perished in their rise to power. Eventually, mafia boss Nicola Gentile intervened to settle a dispute involving the brothers' associates. Pete Carlino's grandson, author Sam Carlino, uncovers intimate photos and new revelations, including confirmation that Pete Carlino met with Salvatore Maranzano in New York and that the death of both men on September 10, 1931, may not have been a coincidence.

The fascinating story of how Ronald Reagan, self-proclaimed "sagebrush rebel," took his revolutionary energy policies to Washington and revitalized the American economy. Governor Reagan, with his unbridled faith in American ingenuity, creativity, and know-how and his confidence in the free-enterprise system, believed the United States would “transcend” the Soviet Union. To do so, however, President Reagan had to revive and revitalize an American economy reeling from a double-digit trifecta (unemployment, inflation, and interest rates), and he knew the economy could not grow without reliable sources of energy that America had in abundance. The environmental movement was in its ascendancy and had persuaded Congress to enact a series of well-intentioned laws that posed threats of great mischief in the hands of covetous bureaucrats, radical groups, and activist judges. A conservationist and an environmentalist, Ronald Reagan believed in being a good steward. More than anything else, however, he believed in people; specifically, for him, people were part of the ecology as well. That was where the split developed. William Perry Pendley, a former member of the Reagan administration and author of some of Reagan's most sensible energy and environmental policies, tells the gripping story of how Reagan fought the new wave of anti-human environmentalists and managed to enact laws that protected nature while promoting the prosperity and freedom of man—saving the American economy in the process.