The U.S. fleet is under attack!High-interest topics, real stories, engaging design and astonishing photos are the building blocks of the XBooks, a new series of books designed to engage and motivate reluctant and enthusiastic readers alike. With topics based in science, history, and social studies, these action-packed books will help students unlock the power and pleasure of reading... and always ask for more!Mess Attendant Dorie Miller wasn't trained for combat. But as Japanese fi...

The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America . . . until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime Family values.And by guys like Sal Polisi.As a member of New York's feared Colombo Family, Polisi ran The Sinatra Club, an illegal after-hours gambling den that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like John Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin...

As a cop, Ron Previte was corrupt. As a mobster he was brutal. And in his final role, as a confidential informant to the FBI, Previte was deadly. The Last Gangster is his story—the story of the last days of the Philadelphia Mob, and of the clash of generations that brought it down once and for all. For thirty-five years, Ron Previte roamed the underworld. A six–foot, three-hundred–pound capo in the Philadelphia-South Jersey crime family, he ran every mob scam and gambit from drug ...

Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the boss of New York's Lucchese crime family, was a Mafia superstar, responsible for more than fifty murders. Currently serving thirteen life sentences at a federal prison in Colorado, Casso has given journalist and New York Times bestselling author Philip Carlo the most intimate, personal look into the world of La Cosa Nostra ever seen. By pure happenstance, Casso had lived next door to the family of young Philip Carlo, who was able to get into the mind, ...

As head of the Bonanno clan, Joey Massino was the last don, and ran his world with an iron hand—until he got hit with a murder rap, and turned on his own people. Here, for the first time, is his shocking true story—a glimpse inside the world of organized crime that we may never see again.

Alfonso "Little Al" D'Arco, the former acting boss of the Luchese crime family, was the highest-ranking mobster to ever turn government witness when he flipped in 1991. His decision to flip prompted many others to make the same choice, including John Gotti's top aide, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, and his testimony sent more than fifty mobsters to prison.In Mob Boss, award-winning news reporters Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins team up for this unparalleled account of D'...

At six-foot-four-inches and 375 pounds, Jack Garcia looked the part of a mobster, and he played his part so perfectly that his Mafia bosses never suspected he was an undercover agent for the FBI. "Big Jack Falcone," as he was known inside La Cosa Nostra, learned all the inside dirt about the Gambino organized crime syndicate and its illegal activities—from extortion and loan-sharking to assault and murder. The result was a string of busts and a quarter-million-dollar contract put out on hi...

Mickey Cohen: The Life and Times of L.A.'s Notorious Mobster is a seductive, premium-octane blend of true crime and Hollywood lore that spins around a wildly eccentric mob boss. When Bugsy Siegel was executed, ruthless Mickey Cohen, a former pro boxer and cunning provocateur, took over criminal activity in L.A., a move sanctioned by Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. Attaining immense power and dominance, from the late 1940s until 1976 the semi-literate Angeleno became an above-the-...

Al DeMeo will never forget the day in 1992 when a coworker taunted him with a copy of the hot new book Murder Machine, chronicling the horrific criminal life of DeMeo's father, Roy, the head of the most deadly gang in organized crime. The moment sent DeMeo into a psychological tailspin: How could he have spent his life looking up to, and loving, a vicious killer?For the Sins of My Father recounts the chilling rise and fall of the man who led the Gambino family's m...

Beginning in the 1920s, an all-star team of goons, gunmen and garrotters transformed America's criminal landscape. Its membership was diverse; the mob recruited men from all ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Most were natives of the Big Apple, handpicked from the city's toughest neighborhoods: Brownsville, Ocean Hill, Flushing. So prolific were their exploits that the media soon dubbed this bevy of hired hands Murder, Incorporated. The brainchild of aging mob bosses, including Meyer L...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Honor and The Last Gangster—“one of the most respected crime reporters in the country” (60 Minutes)—comes the sure to be headline-making inside story of the Gotti and Gambino families, told from the unique viewpoint of notorious mob hit-man John Alite, a close associate of Junior Gotti who later testified against him.In Gotti’s Rules, George Anastasia, a prize-winning reporter who s...

It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window. Under their reign, Hell's Kitchen becomes a place wher...