Dick Lehr

Gerard O'Neill

Explores the relationship between FBI agent John Connolly and Irish mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger, chronicling a corrupt arrangement of information, racketeering, and murder.

The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob

Black Mass

For fans of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, the thrilling true story of a would-be terrorist attack against a Kansas farming town's immigrant community, and the FBI informant who exposed it. In the spring of 2016, as immigration debates rocked the United States, three men in a militia group known as the Crusaders grew aggravated over one Kansas town's growing Somali community. They decided that complaining about their new neighbors and threatening them directly wasn't enough. The men plotted to bomb a mosque, aiming to kill hundreds and inspire other attacks against Muslims in America. But they would wait until after the presidential election, so that their actions wouldn't hurt Donald Trump's chances of winning. An FBI informant befriended the three men, acting as law enforcement's eyes and ears for six months. His secretly taped conversations with the militia were pivotal in obstructing their plans and were a lynchpin in the resulting trial and convictions for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. White Hot Hate will tell the riveting true story of an averted case of domestic terrorism in one of the most remote towns in the US, not far from the infamous town where Capote's In Cold Blood was set. In the gripping details of this foiled scheme, we see in intimate focus the chilling, immediate threat of domestic terrorism--and racist anxiety in America writ large.

A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America's Heartland

White Hot Hate

Determined to clear her father of the wrongful conviction for a gang-related crossfire death, thirteen-year-old Trell persuades a reporter and a lawyer to investigate the case and uncover the truth.

Trell

From the bestselling writers of Black Mass, now a major film, comes the definitive biography of Whitey Bulger - the most brutal modern day mafia boss since Gotti. Drawing on previously classified material, Whitey tells the story of James J. 'Whitey' Bulger, the crime boss, psychopath and killer who brought the FBI to its knees. From his childhood on the streets of South Boston and his cell in Alcatraz in the 1950s, to the corrupt pact with the FBI and the fifteen years he hid in plain sight as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted, Whitey is the story of corruption, greed and an insatiable hunger for power and control. A sadistic crime boss who liked to get his hands dirty even at the top, this explosive biography creates a portrait of a monster, and one of the most successful organised crime careers of all time.

Whitey

Mitchell Zuckoff

The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders

Judgment Ridge

In 1915, two men—one a journalist agitator, the other a technically brilliant filmmaker—incited a public confrontation that roiled America, pitting black against white, Hollywood against Boston, and free speech against civil rights. Monroe Trotter and D. W. Griffith were fighting over a film that dramatized the Civil War and Reconstruction in a post-Confederate South. Almost fifty years earlier, Monroe's father, James, was a sergeant in an all-black Union regiment that marched into Charleston, South Carolina, just as the Kentucky cavalry—including Roaring Jack Griffith, D. W.'s father—fled for their lives. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation, included actors in blackface, heroic portraits of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and a depiction of Lincoln's assassination. Freed slaves were portrayed as villainous, vengeful, slovenly, and dangerous to the sanctity of American values. It was tremendously successful, eventually seen by 25 million Americans. But violent protests against the film flared up across the country. Monroe Trotter's titanic crusade to have the film censored became a blueprint for dissent during the 1950s and 1960s. This is the fiery story of a revolutionary moment for mass media and the nascent civil rights movement, and the men clashing over the cultural and political soul of a still-young America standing at the cusp of its greatest days.

How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America's Civil War

The Birth of a Nation

The definitive and dramatic account of what became known as "Operation Vengeance" -- the targeted kill by U.S. fighter pilots of Japan's larger-than-life military icon, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval genius who had devised the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. “AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.” At 7:58 a.m. on December 7, 1941, an officer at the Ford Island Command Center typed what would become one of the most famous radio dispatches in history, as the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial assault on U.S. bases on Hawaii. In a little over two hours, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, propelling the U.S.’s entry into World War II. Dead Reckoning is the epic true story of the high-stakes operation undertaken sixteen months later to avenge that deadly strike – a longshot mission hatched hastily at the U.S. base on Guadalcanal. Expertly crafting this "hunt for Bin Laden"-style WWII story, New York Times bestselling author Dick Lehr recreates the tension-filled events leading up to the climactic clash in the South Pacific skies – frontline moments loaded with xenophobia, spycraft, sacrifice and broken hearts. Lehr goes behind the scenes at Station Hypo on Hawaii, where U.S. Navy code breakers first discovered exactly where and when to find Admiral Yamamoto, on April 18, 1943, and then chronicles in dramatic detail the nerve-wracking mission to kill him. He focuses on Army Air Force Major John W. Mitchell, the ace fighter pilot from the tiny hamlet of Enid, Mississippi who was tasked with conceiving a flight route, literally to the second, for the only U.S. fighter plane on Guadalcanal capable of reaching Yamamoto hundreds of miles away – the new twin-engine P-38 Lightning with its fabled “cone of fire.” Given unprecedented access to Mitchell’s personal papers and hundreds of private letters, Lehr reveals for the first time the full story of Mitchell’s wartime exploits up to the face-off with Yamamoto, along with those of key American pilots Mitchell chose for the momentous mission: Rex Barber, Thomas Lanphier Jr., Besby Holmes, and Ray Hine. The spotlight also shines on their enemy target –Admiral Yamamoto, the enigmatic, charismatic commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, whose complicated feelings about the U.S.—he studied at Harvard—add rich complexity. In this way Dead Reckoning offers at once a fast-paced recounting of a crucial turning point in the Pacific war and keenly drawn portraits of its two main protagonists: Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor, and John Mitchell, the architect of the Yamamoto’s demise. Dead Reckoning features black-and-white photos throughout.

The Story of How Johnny Mitchell and His Fighter Pilots Took on Admiral Yamamoto and Avenged Pearl Harbor

Dead Reckoning

“A monumental account of an urban travesty….[It] has all the earmarks of a classic.” —Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and Shutter Island Dick Lehr’s The Fence, subtitled, “A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide,” is a shocking true story of racism, brutality, official lies and negligence, when the truth about the savage beating of black plainclothes policeman by white officers was hidden behind a “blue wall of silence.” Respected journalist Lehr, winner of the Hancock Award, the Loeb Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and bestselling author of Black Mass and Judgment Ridge, sheds a brilliant light on all aspects of this powerful, disturbing event and its aftermath.

A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide

The Fence

On February 26, 1986, Mafia underboss Gennaro Angiulo was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. In The Underboss, bestselling authors Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill tell the story of the fall of the house of Angiulo. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, aided in part by the Irish Mob's Whitey Bulger, entered the Boston Mafia's headquarters in Boston's North End early one morning in 1981 and began to compile the evidence that would lead to the entire upper tier of one of the most profitable and ruthless criminal enterprises in America. Originally published in hardback by St. Martin's in 1989, The Underboss became a national bestseller. Information uncovered during the course of Lehr and O'Neill's Black Mass investigations adds new dimensions to the story and the authors include this new material-including Whitey Bulger's cagey manipulation of the FBI-in The Underboss's revised text and in a new preface and afterword.

The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family

The Underboss

Now in an updated and revised edition, the definitive book on the Boston Mafia, by the authors of the bestselling, Edgar Award-winning true crime thriller Black Mass

Whitey Bulger was the crime boss and killer who brought the FBI to its knees. Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill examine and reveal the factors and forces that created the monster. This is a deeply rendered portrait of evil that spans nearly a century, taking Whitey from the streets of his boyhood Southie in the 1940s to his cell in Alcatraz in the 1950s to his cunning, corrupt pact with the FBI in the 1970s and, finally, to Santa Monica, California where for fifteen years he was hiding in plain sight as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted. In a lifetime of crime and murder that ended with his arrest in June 2011, Whitey Bulger became one of the most powerful and deadly crime bosses of the twentieth century.

the life of America's most notorious mob boss

Casey Sherman

Originally published as "A Rose for Mary," this account by the nephew of the so-called Boston Strangler's last victim details his ten-year quest to find the real killer of 13 women in the early 1960s, and describes an unlikely alliance with the family of self-confessed murderer Albert DeSalvo. photos.

My Hunt for Boston's Most Notorious Killer

Search for the Strangler

Now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp A New York Times Bestseller A Boston Globe Bestseller An ABA Indie Bestseller James "Whitey" Bulger became one of the most ruthless gangsters in US history, and all because of an unholy deal he made with a childhood friend. John Connolly a rising star in the Boston FBI office, offered Bulger protection in return for helping the Feds eliminate Boston's Italian mafia. But no one offered Boston protection from Whitey Bulger, who, in a blizzard of gangland killings, took over the city's drug trade. Whitey's deal with Connolly's FBI spiraled out of control to become the biggest informant scandal in FBI history. Black Mass is a New York Times and Boston Globe bestseller, written by two former reporters who were on the case from the beginning. It is an epic story of violence, double-cross, and corruption at the center of which are the black hearts of two old friends whose lives unfolded in the darkness of permanent midnight.

Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal

Now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp A New York Times Bestseller A Boston Globe Bestseller An ABA Indie Bestseller James “Whitey” Bulger became one of the most ruthless gangsters in US history, and all because of an unholy deal he made with a childhood friend. John Connolly a rising star in the Boston FBI office, offered Bulger protection in return for helping the Feds eliminate Boston's Italian mafia. But no one offered Boston protection from Whitey Bulger, who, in a blizzard of gangland killings, took over the city's drug trade. Whitey's deal with Connolly's FBI spiraled out of control to become the biggest informant scandal in FBI history. Black Mass is a New York Times and Boston Globe bestseller, written by two former reporters who were on the case from the beginning. It is an epic story of violence, double-cross, and corruption at the center of which are the black hearts of two old friends whose lives unfolded in the darkness of permanent midnight.

A riveting investigation of the brutal murders of two Dartmouth professors –– a book that, like In Cold Blood, reveals the chilling reality behind a murder that captivated the nation. On a cold night in January 2001, the idyllic community of Dartmouth College was shattered by the discovery that two of its most beloved professors had been hacked to death in their own home. Investigators searched helplessly for clues linking the victims, Half and Susanne Zantop, to their murderer or murderers. A few weeks later, across the river, in the town of Chelsea, Vermont, police cars were spotted in front of the house of high school senior Robert Tulloch. The police had come to question Tulloch and his best friend, Jim Parker. Soon , the town discovered the incomprehensible reality that Tulloch and Parker, two of Chelsea's brightest and most popular sons, were now fugitives, wanted for the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop. Authors Mitchell Zuckoff and Dick Lehr provide a vivid explication of a murder that captivated the nation, as well as dramatic revelations about the forces that turned two popular teenagers into killers. Judgement Ridge conveys a deep appreciation for the lives (and the devastating loss) of Half and Susanne Zantop, while also providing a clear portrait of the killers, their families, and their community –and, perhaps, a warning to any parent about what evil may lurk in the hearts of boys.

Gerard O'Neil

Now a major film starring Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch, Sienna Miller and Joel Edgerton.

Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil's Deal

From the bestselling writers of Black Mass, now a major film, comes the definitive biography of Whitey Bulger – the most brutal modern day mafia boss since Gotti. Drawing on previously classified material, Whitey tells the story of James J. ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the crime boss, psychopath and killer who brought the FBI to its knees. From his childhood on the streets of South Boston and his cell in Alcatraz in the 1950s, to the corrupt pact with the FBI and the fifteen years he hid in plain sight as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted, Whitey is the story of corruption, greed and an insatiable hunger for power and control. A sadistic crime boss who liked to get his hands dirty even at the top, this explosive biography creates a portrait of a monster, and one of the most successful organised crime careers of all time.

A gritty and riveting, true-life tale of violence, race, and injustice within the ranks of the Boston police department.

Dick Lehr

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