I read many old books about power, crime, politics, murder, gossip and more.
Noir
Hardboiled stories where political power spills out like blood.
You Were Never Really Here by Jonathan Ames
A disgruntled troop hunts the sicko politicians and their creepy little blackmail brothels. It came out in 2013, four whole years before Pizzagate. Ninety pages, tense and violent, I pumped my fist and hooted, imagining Joe raining justice on them all.
The Prone Gunman by Jean-Paul Manchette
Jean-Paul Manchette writes about French hitmen beyond morality—Guys who would see Camus The Stranger on the beach and beat him to death with a rock. I love how they ghostwrite a book to cover up all his crimes.
The Spook Who Sat By The Door by Sam Greenlee
A satirical spy novel about Black Revolution written by a former spy. A complex piece of propaganda and a moving spy novel with excellent prose. It lays out the vision for a Black uprising in American cities and how law enforcement can subvert that energy (with drugs). I wrote more about this story and the Chicago Police Officer with a cameo in the film adaptation.
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
A mother’s fatal revenge quest tells the bigger story of how mafias act as racialized vigilantes. The Irish mob would organize poorly paid workers to reject school integration so white gangs could monopolize the drug trade. Lehane says it’s his last novel, and while I hope he’s wrong, this one is emotional, cerebral, and visceral, and it is one of his best.
Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper
Harper’s novel details how PR firms and reputation management control the messages we see. Presenting Hollywood as a complex child trafficking scheme with a narrative that has uncanny similarities to Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
Parapolitics
As we move from the surveillance era to the psyop era, I see this history subgenre as a shield, a psychic protection spell.
Sally Denton’s Work
Sally Denton is an incredible researcher and storyteller who writes mindblowing stories. Her 1991 debut, The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs & Murder, builds off of Gary Webb’s work and details the network of power connecting the Bushes, Clintons, Iran-Contra gun-running, drug smuggling, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Profiteers: Bechdel and the Men Who Built the World examines the construction firm that gets trillions in federal contracts to build roads, bridges, and power plants in the countries invaded by the US. This company is very close to countless historical events. And The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land tells one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard. Tribes of Mormons went out to Mexico and lived in the mountains and now are an ominous cartel-like community.
Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin by Lee Server
When I bought this, the bookseller said, “This is the closest non-fiction to James Ellroy I’ve ever read, but it’s crazier. Ellroy tones it down.” I finally read it, and it’s all true! Johnny Rosselli is arguably one of the most important people in post-war America. He knew everybody. The Kennedys. Hoffa. Studio heads, the Outfit, the Five Families, and Sinatra (of course). Johnny was a fixer who fixed labor disputes, entertainment production, vice, nightlife attempts at Cuban regime change, and the Kennedy assassination. This dude got around. Server’s research is broad and well-sourced, and he does a great job making sense of layered narrative.
Hollywood Kryptonite: The Bulldog, the Lady, and the Death of Superman by Sam Kushner and Nancy Shoenberger
A smaller paranoid story. The original Superman actor didn’t kill himself: George Reeve’s suicide was a coverup. His scorned lover, Toni Mannix, called in a hit. Now, Toni’s husband, Eddie Manni,x was the legendary fixer for MGM, and Eddie was impotent, so he didn’t care about the philandering. Still, he had a scrap of paper with the number of a hit service on his desk, and this book lays out a compelling case in which T. Mannix did it. They assemble proof from Reeve’s friend, references made by his lover, testimony from police on the scene, and even a secondhand confirmation from the hitman. Should this book be in my Gossip category? The official narrative was Reeves killed himself. Perhaps any story can be faked for the powerful. All they need is a body.
Drugs as a Weapon Against Us by John Potash
This book makes a well-sourced argument for how the US government uses drugs to manipulate its population to control flows of oil, labor, and more drugs. Oil keeps the machines running; drugs keep the people running. “The spice must flow.” Potash cites hundreds of sources from across the 20th century, detailing the multi-generational project to use the entertainment industry to market drugs, use drug charges to fine and imprison citizens, sabotage resistance movements, and force compliance for the empire. Potash offers a finely crafted argument and an annotated bibliography on drugs, police, and federal police.
Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA by Brad Schrieber
The whole thing was a fix from top to bottom. The word “Psyop” gets thrown around a lot nowadays. This is one that worked really good in 1974, and Schrieber compiles proof of exactly how it worked. He gets police records admitting Donald DuFreeze was an informant long before he became Cinque Mtume or went to Vacaville. At a prison that was later forced to admit it did psychological manipulation on prisoners, he was added to the Black Cultural Association, a “support group” led by a federal law enforcement officer who groomed DuFreeze into becoming a political cult leader. Local San Francisco groups knew DuFreeze and the Symbionese Liberation Army were a front for law enforcement after the group shot a respected grassroots politician. But the weirdest part is the guy who invented Kwanzaa, Maulana/Ron Karenga, was involved in planning this operation, according to the book. I don’t allege this, Ron; the book does. Yet the media reported Patty Hearst’s kidnapping to completely discredit Black anti-capitalist organizing and turn it into a spectacle. And they keep doing it.
Literature
Transcending language to evoke great feeling and meaning.
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
Fictional literary criticism of actual networks of fascist intellectuals and militias. One read is this is Bolaño mocking the right-wing intelligentsia, mercilessly roasting them for being race-obsessed freaks. But there are also moments of pathos for the weird, lonely, mostly rich outcasts who believe something so stridently. A literary work with a practical function for historians: it offers a 3D portrait of post-WWII fascism on a global scale. Spencer Sunshine’s new non-fiction work, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, detailing American fascism post WWII shows how these networks overlap. I have more to say about this one for later…
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
Another Chilean is describing the limits of reality. Science history dramatized to make its impact felt, highlighting the relationship between discovery and death. The pigment for Prussian Blue paint makes Zyclon-B for the gas chambers. The quest for a universal theory reveals that the universe is far more fragile than it appears. These stories stretch the limits of science, fiction, and history.
Cosmic Banditos by Allan Weisbecker
This book was a trip, literally about guys tripping on hallucinogens on a road trip. They get on ships, lead cartels, and work for the CIA. And there’s a good boy dog. And aliens! Jam-packed with ideas and written with fun, self-referential comedic timing. The introduction insists it was popular on army bases, and if you want to peek into the brains of the UFO Guy, here it is.
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
A blistering satire of race in publishing that revels in the cringeness of being a White woman. When the protagonist steals her dead rival’s manuscript, she takes credit, launching a career but secretly knowing she’s a total fraud. The prose is hilarious and very pointed, a pointed critique on publishing for profit and turning heritage and history into marketing categories.
Gossip
Audacious memoirs, an oral history, and a gossipy biography in a very informal category that I made up.
Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy by Dr. Steven Powell
Nobody in human history is like James Ellroy. When his mother was found brutally murdered, dead on the side of the road, an LA Times reporter came to his house and snapped a picture of him the exact moment he found out. He went on to become a homeless, alcoholic, glue-huffing panty-sniffer, then, after finding 12-step programs, one of the most successful and audacious crime writers of the last fifty years. This book tells that wild story.
My Father The Pornographer: a Memoir by Chris Offutt
A writer finds out his father wrote hundreds of erotica novels, millions of words of highly specific smut. How strange it would be to find your father’s freaky barbarian pornography and learn he was a respected master of the genre—his life’s work that paid for the children’s college. I wrote a bit more here.
Paper of Wreckage: An Oral History of the New York Post, 1976-2024 by Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo
The New York Post in all its gossipy glory! Detailing the ownership transition to Rupert Murdoch, when he took his Australian fortune and invested in American media properties. The seeds of Fox News, Trump, crass, cruel, and invasive entertainment all start in this newsroom. Hearing how the mob ran the delivery trucks, pitching morbid joke headlines for terrible tragedies, and what Donald Trump and Roy Cohn would say when they called the paper were all standouts for this wide-ranging oral history.
Tiger King: The Official Tell All Memoir by Joe Exotic
I liked the Tiger King show because I thought Joe Exotic was a riot. He is! An extraordinary man who’s driven ambulances, worked as a law enforcement officer, survived car wrecks, buried husbands and a brother, ran a successful LGBT-friendly pet store, and even an early adopter of live streaming technology. He also ran America’s most successful and notorious big cat sanctuary until that awful Carole Baskin got him in her sights. This book is so hysterically funny.
Series
I’m a sucker for a series characters.
Skink Books by Carl Hiaasen
After seeing a poster at the bus stop for Apple TV’s Bad Monkey, I finally checked out Hiaasen after a half-dozen recommendations. Loved it. Weird old swamp men solving mysteries, jaded ex-military guys fighting real estate developers that want to destroy the wetlands. Fun stuff!
Jimmy the Kid by Donald Westlake
I finally read a handful of Dortmunder novels, including Jimmy the Kid, one of the goofiest, most fun crime novels ever written! John Dortmunder is a grumpy thief who’s reluctantly friends with Andy Kelp, a schlemiel who suggests they carry out a heist straight from a Parker novel, the other serious noir series that Westlake writes. Metafictional hijinx ensues, ending with an intervention from the author. Fun, silly, amusing stuff, even though it’s a half-century old!
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
I love the Lincoln Lawyer because he cheats to win. Good for him! The legal system is rigged! And so he has to get zany. Like when they accused him of murder, and he must free himself from jail by arguing his case and defending himself! Then, he teams up with Bosch to get random people out of jail! OK! Now we’re talking: the Bosch-iverse. I heard a rumor that another will come out relatively soon, and I can’t wait!
Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
I love Nancy! She’s got a convertible, her dad’s a lawyer, and she’s the nicest girl in the world. When she goes to the big department store and sees the mean rich sisters who are fat and boorish try on the dresses and rip them up, what does Nancy do? She helps the attendant lady, stops her crying, buys the ripped dress, and promises to fix it with her sewing machine! Her being nice is also a keen way for her to get evidence. This book is deeply coded in cozy DNA, sharing vibes and dialogue rhythm. A fun mystery adventure that’s almost a century old!
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