Led by two childhood pals, Thomas "Snake" Kinney and Tom Egan, the Egan's Rats emerged from St. Louis's Irish slums. They learned their trade the old-fashioned way, via robberies, brawls, burglaries, and shootings. When Kinney ran on the Democratic ticket in the third ward, his friends were at the polls to ensure he got enough votes. For nearly ten years the gang cut a large swath in St. Louis, instilling fear wherever it went. With Snake Kinney, a Missouri state senator and Tom Egan, St. Louis's most dangerous gangster, the gang boasted nearly 400 members. Nearly everyone who lived in St. Louis was touched by them in some way or another. Egan's Rats provides a fascinating glimpse into a past that wasn't always idyllic. It was an era in which roving gangs of thugs terrorized voters with impunity, when alcohol was illegal, when a gangster could brag of his power in the newspaper, and when the tendrils of St. Louis crime reached all the way into the White House.

St. Louis was a city under siege during Prohibition. Seven different criminal gangs violently vied for control of the town's illegal enterprises. Although their names (the Green Ones, the Pillow Gang, the Russo Gang, Egan's Rats, the Hogan Gang, the Cuckoo Gang and the Shelton Gang) are familiar to many, their exploits have remained largely undocumented until now. Learn how an awkward gunshot wound gave the Pillow Gang its name, and read why Willie Russo's bizarre midnight interview with a reporter from the St. Louis Star involved an automatic pistol and a floating hunk of cheese. From daring bank robberies to cold-blooded betrayals, The Gangs of St. Louis chronicles a fierce yet juicy slice of the Gateway City's history that rivaled anything seen in New York or Chicago.

"Reppetto's book earns its place among the best . . . he brings fresh context to a familiar story worth retelling." —The New York Times Book Review Organized crime—the Italian American kind—has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise—from the 1880s to the post-WWII era—that is as exciting and readable as it is authoritative. Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia. It wasn't until the 1920s, thanks to Prohibition, that the Mafia assumed what we now consider its defining characteristics, especially its octopuslike tendency to infiltrate industry and government. At mid-century the Kefauver Commission declared the Mafia synonymous with Union Siciliana; in the 1960s the FBI finally admitted the Mafia's existence under the name La Cosa Nostra. American Mafia is a fascinating look at America's most compelling criminal subculture from an author who is intimately acquainted with both sides of the street.

"Recommended." — Library Journal. Written by the bestselling author of The Gangs of New York, this wide-ranging survey of the Prohibition era is populated by bootleggers, gangsters, and corrupt police as well as such reformers as Frances E. Willard.

Lawman Eliot Ness has been transformed into legend by the films and television programs that depicted the war he and his "Untouchables" waged against Al Capone and the mobsters of Prohibition-era Chicago. Published by McFarland in 2000, the first edition of this volume analyzed both Ness the person and Ness the myth. This updated and expanded second edition is enhanced by information gathered through interviews with members of the original casts of the television and film versions of The Untouchables. Also included is new material on the historical Frank Nitti and "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run," along with several gangsters whom Ness never actually encountered except in his media portrayals, among them Mad Dog Coll and Dutch Schultz. The author concludes by evaluating the life and accomplishments of Eliot Ness, and his impact as a cultural icon.

Over 200 writings about Nevada with selections from Native American tales to contemporary writings on urban experience and environmental concerns. The state of Nevada embodies paradox and contradiction—home to one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and to isolated ranches scattered across a sparsely populated backcountry. Nevada is a place where the lust for sudden wealth has prompted both wild mining booms and glittering casinos, and where forbidding atomic test sites coexist with alluring tourist meccas. The variety and distinctiveness of Nevada’s landscape and peoples have inspired writers from the beginning of immigrant contact with the region. This contact has produced abundant literary wealth that includes the rich oral traditions of Native American peoples and an amazing spectrum of contemporary voices. Literary Nevada is the first comprehensive literary anthology of Nevada. It contains over 200 selections ranging from traditional Native American tales, explorers’ and emigrants’ accounts, and writing from the Comstock Lode and other mining boomtowns, as well as compelling fiction, poetry, and essays from throughout the state’s history. There is work by well-known Nevada writers such as Sarah Winnemucca, Mark Twain, and Robert Laxalt, by established and emerging writers from all parts of the state, and by some nonresident authors whose work illuminates important facets of the Nevada experience. The book includes cowboy poetry, travel writing, accounts of nuclear Nevada, narratives about rural life and urban life in Las Vegas and Reno, poetry and fiction from the state’s best contemporary writers, and accounts of the special beauty of wild Nevada’s mountains and deserts. Editor Cheryll Glotfelty provides insightful introductions to each section and author. The book also includes a photo gallery of selected Nevada writers and a generous list of suggested further readings. Nevada has inspired an exceptionally rich panorama of fine writing and a dazzling array of literary voices. The selections in Literary Nevada will engage and delight readers while revealing the complex and exciting diversity of the state’s history, people, and life.