The Nappers

“The Nappers is a saga about an East Harlem, New York, gangster who comes up with a lucrative, if dangerous idea of kidnapping his fellow gangsters. It is also the story about the collapse of the mob, which turns out to have been caused more by Urban Renewal than the FBI. And there is also enough of a love story stirred into the plot to make a great movie.—Can’t wait.” —Nick Pileggi— Author of “Wiseguy” and the screenplay “Goodfellas” “The book is written in a language which captures your imagination in a way that makes you feel like you’re part of the moment. I couldn’t wait to turn the page. I hope someone asks me to be in the movie...” —Bo Dietl— Retired NYPD Homicide Detective, author of “One Tough Cop” and Business Lunchatations. Nick Rondi the author of The Nappers was born and raised in East Harlem in New York City. This story is composed not only of his recollection of what transpired in the neighborhood in the years 1949 to 1968, but also of events to which he bore witness. His knowledge of “The Life”—the people living it, the honor and dishonor of being part of it—compelled him to write this book. At its heart The Nappers is also the story of the destruction of a neighborhood that was once the largest Italian enclave in the United States. Although Joey Rendino the protagonist is a gangster who kidnaps other mobsters—thus the title—he is also a man in love. Narrated by his watchful younger brother, this tale of star-crossed love as well as tragedies both personal and political will leave readers wondering which side of a fine line to walk with characters whose actions are both violent and tender. The Nappers can be read as a passionate story between two conflicted longtime lovers, or one of love between two brothers. It’s also a tale about inexplicable acts that caused much confusion in a close-knit community and left many unanswered questions. And last but not least it’s a love letter to a neighborhood that was dismantled piece by piece in the name of urban renewal.

Quantitative Studies of the Renaissance Florentine Economy and Society is a collection of nine quantitative studies probing aspects of Renaissance Florentine economy and society. The collection, organized by topic, source material and analysis methods, discusses risk and return, specifically the population’s responses to the plague and also the measurement of interest rates. The work analyzes the population’s wealth distribution, the impact of taxes and subsidies on art and architecture, the level of neighborhood segregation and the accumulation of wealth. Additionally, this study assesses the competitiveness of Florentine markets and the level of monopoly power, the nature of women’s work and the impact of business risk on the organization of industrial production.

Learn the best time to do everything -- from drink your coffee to have sex or go for a run -- according to your body's chronotype. Most advice centers on what to do, or how to do it, and ignores the when of success. But exciting new research proves there is a right time to do just about everything, based on our biology and hormones. As Dr. Michael Breus proves in The Power Of When, working with your body's inner clock for maximum health, happiness, and productivity is easy, exciting, and fun. The Power Of When presents a groundbreaking program for getting back in sync with your natural rhythm by making minor changes to your daily routine. After you've taken Dr. Breus's comprehensive Bio-Time Quiz to figure out your chronotype (are you a Bear, Lion, Dolphin or Wolf?), you'll find out the best time to do over 50 different activities. Featuring a foreword by Mehmet C. Oz, MD, and packed with fascinating facts, fun personality quizzes, and easy-to-follow guidelines, The Power Of When is the ultimate "lifehack" to help you achieve your goals.

The New York Times–bestselling author finds the pulse of the aging American male in two ingeniously funny novels. “I just laughed myself sick” (Neil Simon). Two classic works of comic self-help fiction by “one of the funniest writers in America” available together for the first time in a single ebook edition (John Gregory Dunne). With its “sparkling . . . winsome and true” look at the single male in America—from his sad new apartment furnishings to his career struggles to the mystifying dating world—Bruce Jay Friedman’s The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life was as cringingly relatable to both men and women when it was first published in 1978 as is today (The New York Times Book Review). The inspiration for Steve Martin’s classic cult film comedy, The Lonely Guy, it was hailed as “the funniest book of this year, or most any other. You don’t close this book. You just start reading it again immediately. I loved every page–and laughed out loud on most of them” (Dan Jenkins, author of Semi-Tough and Dead Solid Perfect). Twenty years later, Friedman returned to the subject with The Slightly Older Guy, finding his quarry no longer alone, maybe a little less lonely, not so young anymore, faltering at fashion, pondering a new career, but just as resiliently witty. Featuring a new afterword, The Considerably Older Guy offers advice on such topics as divorce, grandchildren, exercise, diet, and insomnia. “If you believe in reading, then when a book comes along by Friedman, you have to read it. It’s as simple as that” (The Washington Post Book World).

My husband has AIDS. I miraculously don’t. How am I going to survive? …I try to keep from screaming, “Dennis, you can’t do this to me now. I left my family, my friends, my job, pulled the kids away from their school and friends—you can’t quit on us. You can’t.” Through clenched teeth, he controls his response, “Scott, I’m tired. I’m dying.” Dennis is walking away and does not sound tired; he sounds angry. “Have you not heard anything I’ve told you for the last twenty-three years? I love you; you are my life. Don’t you dare think I’m not dying here, too. You may be the one who gets buried, but I’m the one who has to figure out how to keep living. I’m dying, Dennis; I’m dying with you.” We stand there, energy spent, emotionally depleted, tears falling. I take him in my arms, and we hold on to each other as if we draw life’s breath from the other—because we do. He sits on the sofa, and I go find the Dallas phone book so I can call Restland, the place where we will bury his body. When Joan Scott Curtis was 43 years old, she found out her husband was dying of AIDS. He had been infected for thirteen years. She tested negative. None of this was possible. It was the mid 1990s. All the prejudices about AIDS are not supposed to exist anymore, but they do. Just Keep Breathing is the remarkable story about finding courage in small victories, on taking solace in helping others, and knowing that even though the major battle will be lost, the ability to live on with grace and dignity is what defines the war.

The cautionary true crime shocker of Virginia’s Elizabeth Hall, and one of the most sensational trials of an accused murderess since Lizzie Borden. On an April morning in 1914, Victor Hall was murdered in his store at Green Springs Depot. It was only hours after his competitor’s business had been torched. The Louisa County sheriff, state investigator, and railroad detectives suspected Hall's rival, one of a dozen men with viable motives. Then gossip spread that Victor’s wife, Elizabeth, had poisoned her first husband. Coupled with more sordid rumors, the unfounded accusations became irresistibly salacious headlines, whipping the state of Virginia into a frenzy for seven months. Friends and neighbors perjured themselves to become part of the front-page story. And as Hall’s own Pinkerton detective turned against her in the same mad rush to judgment, the widow found herself trapped in a nightmare that was just beginning. A century later, J.K. Brandau, husband of Elizabeth Hall’s great-granddaughter, finally unearths the timely and tragic story in which truth didn’t stand a chance against the most public, lurid, and sensational lies.

This, the first critical biography of Arthur Morrison (1863-1945), presents his East End writing as the counter-myth to the cultural production of the East End in late-Victorian realism. Morrison’s works, particularly Tales of Mean Streets (1894) and A Child of the Jago (1896), are often discussed as epitomes of slum fictions of the 1890s as well as prime examples of nineteenth-century realism, but their complex contemporary reception reveals the intricate paradoxes involved in representing the turn-of-the-century city. Arthur Morrison and the East End examines how an understanding of the East End in the Victorian cultural imagination operates in Morrison’s own writing. Engaging with the contemporary vogue for slum fiction, Morrison redressed accounts written by outsiders, positioning himself as uniquely knowledgeable about a place considered unknowable. His work provides a vigorous challenge to the fictionalised East End created by his predecessors, whilst also paying homage to Charles Dickens, George Gissing, Walter Besant and Guy de Maupassant. Examining the London sites which Morrison lived in and wrote about, this book is an excursion not into the Victorian East End, but into the fictions constructed around it.