story, and especially for me being from Chicago, but he took a long time to get to the informant part and the trials, I found the beginning a bit tedious to get through as he spent half the book just talking about his early life and then his flashy life and escapades with the Mob.
Also, it would probably be a better read vs, listen like I did via Audible because there are a lot of names to keep straight, But I must say, the process of him getting the recordings and the trial portions were really fascinating, Imagine my surprise when I read in the Chicago Tribune on Decemberth that Governor Rob Blagojavich had just consulted with attorney Ed Genson, I had only finished this book about Chicago corruption by government informer, Robert Cooley about a week before this story broke,
In Cooley's book, a mafia hitman named Sammy Anarino was ordered by his crew boss to retain Genson, In addition, Cooley claimed that Genson reported directly to mob boss, Marco D'Amico, that he thought Frank Renella had turned government informant, Let's also not forget that Genson was the lawyer who served as the "mouthpiece" for Pat Marcy aka Pasqualino Marchone, the notorious Chicago "fixer" who led in bribing judges, ordering hits, and paving the way to illegally gain government favors and favorable legislation, not to mention serving as mouthpiece for crooked judges caught in Operation Greylord and Gambit.
I thought I was reading about modern history, I didn't realize how topical it was until the recent scandal broke, On Decemberth, I was dining at a Chicago restaurant called Portillo's, Not only do they have the best Italian Beef Sandwiches in the world I'm not biasedgrin, but they have lots of historical photographs of old Chicago on display.
I was with a friend from out of town and actually took the time to read some of the captions, One of the Prohibition Era photos had a picture of a man named Joey Aiuppa in a police lineup, Cooley had also mentioned him, Even in the 's, if the Chicago wiseguys had any disputes, Cooley claimed that an old guy named Joey Aiuppa would fly in from his retirement home in Palm Springs and settle things.
The book itself is the
memoir of a sleazebag, a modern era Harry Flashman with a license to practice lawIF you can claim that bribing judges to fix cases and running up illegal gambling debts all over Chicago is practicing law.
He runs through girls like he runs through clothes and he runs through money like water used to run through the Buckingham Fountain downtown, He has a strange "code of honor" in the sense of honor among thieves not authentic honor in that he represents hit men, dope pushers, and crooked officials but turns evidence on them after they are no longer his clients this was true of the On Leong social organization that I once joked with my wife was the local "tong" and it turns out to have been an influential gang in the 's and early 's.
It is a fascinating look at the corrupt inner circle of a corrupt city in a corrupt state that I call home, This was pageturning reading for memuch more stimulating than any "gangster" bio or memoir I've read since the purported "last testament" of Lucky Luciano, I lived in downtown Chicago, in the loop, foryears and, since moving, have become an amateur Chicago historian, especially about the Chicago outfit and its effects on the past and present culture of the city.
It is a lot of fun to read all the details in history books when you know the streets, intersections, addresses, the buildings, etc, based on actual memories of those places,
This book is one of the best topthat I have read from the "Chicago outfit / history" genre, and I have read at leastorof those books.
One of its strengths is that it focuses on a more recent erass than most books in this genre, which detail thess, This focus made the book more relatable because more of the businesses and people in this book are still around I have met some of the people in this book compared to references in older history books.
It is also wellwritten, It is not too long the content/word ratio is much larger than most historythemed books, some of which arepages long, Bob Cooley's partnership with writer Hillel Levin produced a great book, According to Levin's website, some of his work in this area is being developed as movie projects I do hope so because there is enough interesting content for it.
In this book, the words, sentences, paragraphs are crafted for readability, The larger structure of the chapters is rational and I never felt lost in the weeds, Some books in this genre go off track as they get into the minutiae of various events, sometimes to the extent that the reader wonders what is going on, or whether or not they are being persuaded to think a particular way.
Not so in this book,
What made it most enjoyable for me is the illustrations of the actual historic characters, The descriptions are rich enough that you can imagine very clearly what these people might have been like, One brief example of what made this book enjoyable for me comes in a section pp,where Cooley describes "Juan Raphael Dante" born John Timothy Keehan, who was known in Chicago as "Count Dante, " Dante claimed to be the most dangerous man alive, and he put ads in comic books across the country to sell his training program and his fighting secrets, which were over the top and fantastical.
He claimed that he could teach you how to strike a person with one finger and paralyze them temporarily, etc, Count Dante is not remembered today many Chicago historians haven't heard of him, but he was wellknown in Chicago including outfit social circles in thes, He was flamboyant, walked around the city wearing a cape and leotards, was the life of the party at Playboy mansion parties, and started outrageous fights in public with adversaries.
The descriptions of Count Dante were downright wild and had me laughing out loud,
Bob Cooley was lucky, He played two sides of a dangerous game, First he was helping the outfit fix trials and bribe judges and later he became an informant to help the FBI and the Chicago police department crack down on organized crime.
In the book, it seems like he realized what he had gotten into only after it was too late to quit, Nonetheless he was fortunate enough to get out and tell his Chicago story in detail, honestly, i thought that this book would be an amazing undercover investigation and narrative of every seedy goingson in chicago betweenand, however, it was one of the most insipid and boring books i have ever read, without any kind of narrative drive, but instead, very dry, i also disliked how the author, the snitch, made himself out to be a man of duty and honor and conscience throughout while he was scheming within the mafia and collaborating with them.
your righteousness means nothing, sir, but is instead offputting, OK. So this is obviously just one side of the story and you get the impression has an agenda, Yet, I enjoyed the read, I don't doubt most of this is true, just as I don't doubt the author omitted plenty which would really put him in a bad light, Even if a quarter of this was true he had some balls, Other reviews have noted that the writing in here isn't stellar, That's a fair complaint, although I wasn't looking for pristine sentence construction for this book, This is a raucous book about someone who lived an extraordinary life, like if your wildest uncle got drunk and spilled his entire life story hyperbole and bad jokes included.
It is interesting to note how complete a hold over Chicago the Outfit had, and how easy it was to slide into corruption, The venn diagram between "ambitious people who used money to keep the machine running" and "corrupt people who were totally compromised" was a complete circle, They all had their justifications, but the naked pursuit of money was a uniting vision, This is an awesome book, It's a true story and the author is a great storyteller, It's entertaining and made more enjoyable by the fact that it is real, I'm waiting for it to become a movie one day, Bob Cooley protests too much when he's called a corrupt lawyer, Didn't he follow in the family footsteps and become a cop Might have stayed there too if it was all as safe as the bookmaking on the side.
Yes, he was mobbed up, but so were the politicians and the judges, And sure, he fixed cases, but he'd give the judge a reason to toss the case, See Helpful guy.
The government mole in Operation Gambat gets no respect, Hey, he quit gambling to please the feds! Didn't he skip the witness protection program And why'd it take so long to go after the big shots The old, oldst Ward was mapped to the Loop but married to the mob, and Cooley had a view from a Counsellors Row restaurant booth.
The curious ethics of this clueless joker help juice up his breezy wiseguy tale, I think he's funny but he does not amuse me,
Gambat carved out an exception to double jeopardy: Hitman Harry Aleman's acquittal didn't count because Cooley fixed the case, Yet, Aleman died in prison, Counsellors Row's now a Qdoba and Gambat is fading into the realm of quaint ITeam flashbacks, It probably irks Cooley no end that Wikipedia credits Gambat cases to Operation Greylord, Hey, that was some other mole! I'm a criminal defense attorney in Cook County, which is where this book is set, and it was recommended to me by another defense attorney as we sat in the courthouse atamp Cal, waiting for the judge to come out.
I tried so hard to get into this book butpages in, I could no longer handle this author's voice, If I wanted to watch a man stroke himself for a few hours how long it would've taken me to actually finish this book, i would've just gone to PornHub.
This book was an important read for me, I read about Greylord earlier this year so this rounded out my understanding of organized crime and governmental corruption in Chicago a bit, It's so clear the corruption is still going on and it's pretty heartbreaking, I love that city but it will eventually destroy itself,
The writing was fine and kept me interested enough to finish the book quickly and the content was pretty mind blowing, I definitely recommend this book if you're interested in nonfiction, politics and especially if you don't mind being aware of uncomfortable realities, I am always fascinated by mob stories and thought this would be interesting, It was, to a point, but there were so many names being thrown about that it was very hard to keep track, I felt it could have been streamlined more to make it less confusing, I think a movie would actually be better than a book for this particular story, And I never say that, A shocking trip into the bowels of corruption, Devastating cautionary tale about the toll money, power and evil can have on American Democracy, Riveting. I read it in one day, Could not put it down, Thank God it was a rainy day, first book i read with my book club since i got to chicago and i thought it was a great introduction into chicago and its history, . Not the best writer but very informative, Along with Devil in the White City and Sister Carrie I'm really growing my chicago based novels! Read this book after reading it when it was first available.
I still find it fascinating,
I was an Assistant Public Defender in Cook County foryears, I was always amazed at how certain private attorneys got these great reputations for being brilliant when I thought most were just a step above incompetence, The author has perfected blowing his own horn as some brilliant legal tactician when not bribing Judges, People who saw him at the Criminal Court wearing that goofy hat of his pegged him as a goof, However, I find himpercent credible in his story here, I do believe he had a Come to Jesus moment, I never met him. I knew his brother. His brother was a fine attorney,
One defense attorney the author trashes was a media darling, I share Bob Cooley's opinion that he was a mobbed up blowhard who loved the sound of his own voice,
To this day in Cook County, you always wonder how some complete idiots are elevated to the local Judiciary,
No matter what his motive was, Bob Cooley performed a great service for the citizens of Cook County, .