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 ...

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.

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...

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...

"Friendships, connections, family ties, trust, loyalty, obedience—this was the 'glue' that held us together."These were the principles that the greatest Mafia "Boss of Bosses," Joseph Bonanno, lived by. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Bonanno found his future amid the whiskey-running, riotous streets of Prohibition America in 1924, when he illegally entered the United States to pursue his dreams. By the age of only twenty-six, Bonanno became a Don. He would eventually take...

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* The No-Holds-Barred Truth About Life Inside the Gotti Dynasty—Told by Their Most Famous DaughterVictoria Gotti never intended to reveal the inside story of the Gotti household—the day-to-day life of a family that has sparked scandalous rumors and sensational headlines for decades. But with the pressing need to finally set the record straight came the realization that only she can do so, once and for all.Daughter to the l...

Richard "The Ice Man" Kuklinski led a double life beyond anything ever seen on The Sopranos, becoming one of the most notorious professional assassins in American history while hosting neighborhood barbecues in suburban New Jersey. Now, after 240 hours of face-to-face interviews with Kuklinski and his wife and daughters, author Philip Carlo tells his extraordinary story.Kuklinski was Sammy "The Bull" Gravano's partner in the killing of Paul Castellano at Spark's Steakhouse...