Jimmy Breslin – författare

It was a big bestseller when it was originally published in 1969. It became a major motion picture that provided Robert DeNiro with his first film role. Its title has entered into the language as a catch phrase. And it's terrific fun!The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is the story of Papa Baccala, a Brooklyn Mafia boss, and Kid Sally Palumbo, a would-be capo who "couldn't run a gas station at a profit even if he stole the customers' cars". There's also Kid Sally's grandmother, who will go to extravagant lengths to see her boy make his mark. A love interest? Sure. Kid Sally's sister tumbles for an artistic type who rides a bicycle and has recently arrived from Calabria...The high adventure begins with a six-day bike race that is only partly responsible for a rash of obituary notices reading: "Died. Suddenly". Eventually it all gets worked out in fine Sicilian fashion -- and, in the end, everybody gets his, in a manner of speaking.

A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist reveals a history of the American mob with “perfect diabolical detail. . . . A master at transforming crookery into opera” (New York Times Book Review).In his inimitable New York voice, New York Times bestselling author Jimmy Breslin gives us a look through the keyhole at the people and places that define the Mafia—characters like John Gotti, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso (named for his weapon of choice), and Jimmy “the Clam” Eppolito—interwoven with the remarkable true-crime saga of the good rat himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the star witness in the trial of two NYPD detectives indicted for carrying out eight gangland executions. Through these unforgettable real-life and long-forgotten Mafia stories, Jimmy Breslin captures the moments in which the mob was made and broken.“The ineffable Breslin, the mob’s Homer, may not have done much to ensure Kaplan’s longevity, but he has surely granted him immortality.” —Boston Globe“Bad cops, good crook, great story.” —USA Today“Breslin is a writer of the heart. It’s hard to name another author who demonstrates a better understanding of the passions of urban misrule.” —Playboy“Completely sure of what he’s doing, the author knows how to hook a reader.” —New York Observer“Brilliant . . . a colorfully nuanced depiction of Burt Kaplan.” —New York Daily News“Jimmy Breslin at his best.” —New York Times “The Good Rat tells us about the corkscrew workings of the criminal mind where Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment left off.” —Nicholas Pileggi, New York Times bestselling author of Wiseguy“Smart and stinging . . . a winner.” —Kirkus Reviews“[Breslin’s] writing, like the Mafia itself, breezily transitions from humorous to horrifying.” —Publishers Weekly

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez is a towering achievement by one of America’s most respected journalists. A work of conscience that travels from San Matías Cuatchatyotla, a small, dusty town in central Mexico, to the cold and wet streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this searing exposé chronicles the life and tragic death of an undocumented worker, along with broader issues of municipal corruption and America’s deadly and controversial border policy.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Call it a miracle, fate, pure luck, or just another day in the city where nothing is usual, but in 1991 Jimmy Breslin narrowly escaped death - which inspired him to write this book about his life. Two years ago, Breslin was having trouble getting his left eyelid to open and close. This was too peculiar to ignore, so Breslin decided to pay a rare visit to his doctor. As it turned out, the eyelid was a matter of nerves. But extensive testing revealed something unrelated and life-threatening: he had an aneurysm in his brain - a thin, ballooned artery wall that could burst and kill him at any moment unless he opted for a risky surgical procedure. Breslin agreed to the surgery and at age sixty-five, grateful for this miracle (what else could you call it?), began taking stock of his remarkable life.

After a lifetime of attending mass every Sunday, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jimmy Breslin has severed his ties to the church he once loved—in this important book, filled with a fury generated by a sense of betrayal, he explains why.When the church sex scandals emerged relentlessly in recent years, and when it became apparent that these scandals had been covered up by the church hierarchy, Jimmy Breslin found it impossible to reconcile his faith with this new reality. Ever the reporter, he visited many victims of molestation by priests and found lives in emotional chaos. He questioned the bishops and found an ossified clergy that has a sense of privilege and entitlement. Thus disillusioned with his church, though not with his faith, he writes about the loss of moral authority yet uses his trademark mordant humor to good effect. Breslin’s righteous anger is put to use. Imagining a renewed church, along with practical solutions such as married priests and female priests, The Church That Forgot Christ also reminds us that Christ wore sandals, not gold vestments and rings, and that ultimately what the Catholic Church needs most is a healthy dose of Christianity. In that sense, Breslin has written a dark book that is full of hope and possibility. It is a book that only Jimmy Breslin could have written.

The book that inspired Harrison Ford in his portrayal of Branch Rickey in the hit movie “42”The idea of integrating baseball began as a dream in the mind of Branch Rickey. In 1947, as president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he defied racism on and off the field to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, changing the sport and the nation forever. Rickey''s is the classic American tale of a poor boy from Ohio whose deep-seated faith and dogged work ethic took him to the pinnacle of success, earning him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame and in history.Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jimmy Breslin is a legend in his own right. In his inimitable anecdotal style, he provides a lively portrait of Rickey and his times, including such colorful characters as Dodgers'' owner George V. McLaughlin ("dubbed George the Fifth" for his love of Scotch); diamond greats Leo Durocher, George Sisler, and Dizzy Dean; and Robinson himself, a man whose remarkable talent was equaled only by his resilience in the face of intolerance. Breslin brings to life the heady days when baseball emerged as the national pastime in this inspiring biography of a great American who remade a sport-and dreamed of remaking a country. See Branch Rickey’s life brought to the screen in the hit movie “42” in theaters everywhere now.

An evocative portrait of the Triple Crown–winning racehorse trainer: “sportswriting as good as it could ever possibly be” (New York Daily News).   At seventy-seven, James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons should have been considering retirement. His six-decade career stretched back to 1885, when, as an eleven year-old, he began working as a stable boy. After failing as a jockey, Fitzsimmons—or Mr. Fitz to those in the know—started training horses, eventually winning three Kentucky Derbys, two Triple Crowns, and more than two thousand races. But by 1951, glory seemed to be behind him. His wife’s sudden death took the light from his eyes, and retirement loomed. And then he met Nashua. She was the kind of horse trainers dream of. Big, powerful, with a windpipe that could suck down enough air to keep her running for weeks. Mr. Fitz knew he had a winner. It was only a matter of time before he realized that he had also just met the most remarkable horse of his long, storied career. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

A “hilarious” look back at the 1962 Mets and their record as the worst baseball team in history by the New York Times–bestselling author (Newark Star-Ledger).   Five years after the Dodgers and Giants fled New York for California, the city’s National League fans were offered salvation in the shape of the New York Mets: an expansion team who, in the spring of 1962, attempted to play something resembling the sport of baseball. Helmed by the sagacious Casey Stengel and staffed by the league’s detritus, the new Mets played 162 games and lost 120 of them, making them statistically the worst team in the sport’s modern history. It’s possible they were even worse than that. Starring such legends as Marvin Throneberry—a first baseman so inept that his nickname had to be “Marvelous”—the Mets lost with swashbuckling panache. In an era when the fun seemed to have gone out of sports, the Mets came to life in a blaze of delightful, awe-inspiring ineptitude—and held a record that would stand for over sixty years. They may have been losers, but a team this awful deserves to be remembered as legends.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

New York Times bestseller: A novel of a messy mob war in Brooklyn that “makes you laugh out loud” (Chicago Sun-Times).   Kid Sally Palumbo has been a loyal servant to the Brooklyn Mafia for years. His specialty is murder, and he is so skilled at it that he has gotten the attention of Mafia boss Papa Baccala. But unfortunately for Kid Sally, murder pays poorly. He wants to make real dough, to get respect, and to be able to tell his colleagues where to sit when they eat dinner. In short, he wants to be boss. The job would be his for the taking—if only Kid Sally weren’t a Grade A moron.  To keep Sally from stirring up trouble, Baccala tosses him an easy assignment: Organize a bicycle race through Brooklyn, and keep the profits. Kid Sally bungles it, setting off a turf war that quickly engulfs the borough. The dimwitted mobsters are masters in the art of murder, and they are about to put on a show. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Adrift in New York, an alcoholic cop searches for meaning in his life by revisiting his past   The department has taken away Dermot Davey’s gun. After countless incidents of excessive force and on-the-job drunkenness, and one harrowing moment where he nearly killed a civilian, the New York Police Department has dumped him on the “Bow and Arrow Squad”—the home for alcoholic cops unfit to carry firearms. Without his pistol, Dermot feels like he’s hardly a cop. As his marriage tanks, Dermot drinks, and considers ending it all. But everything changes when he learns about his dad. Dermot’s father disappeared when he was a child, leaving Dermot’s mother to raise him alone. Now Dermot hears word that his old man has surfaced in Ulster, the heart of the increasingly bloody Irish Troubles. Hoping to find redemption, he travels to Ireland to meet his father. What he finds is a war-torn, deadly place—a brutish, ugly city that is nevertheless no uglier than the darkness inside his own soul. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

After the Watergate scandal corrupted American democracy, it took a gang of honest politicians to restore honorNot long after burglars were caught raiding the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, Congressman Tip O’Neill noticed that Democratic fundraising efforts for the 1972 election had stalled. Major contributors were under IRS investigation, and Republican lackeys were threatening further trouble if those donors didn’t close their checkbooks. O’Neill sensed a conspiracy coming from the Nixon administration, but it wasn’t until the scandal broke that he connected the threatened donors with the Watergate burglary. In the boldest move of his career, he did something that would shock the nation: O’Neill decided to impeach the President. To his fellow members of the House of Representatives, this was an ugly idea. But as evidence mounted against Nixon and his cronies, O’Neill led the charge against the President. This blow-by-blow, conviction-by-conviction account is a gripping reminder of how O’Neill and his colleagues brought justice to those who abused their power, and revived America after the greatest political scandal in its history. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

A novel of crime and passion in the South Bronx by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight and The Good Rat. The Department of Corrections makes a mistake when it grants parole to a young Puerto Rican man named Teenager. After a few years in jail for dealing narcotics, he promises the parole board that he’s gone straight. But Teenager has no intention of abandoning his life of crime. He dreams only of money, and will do anything to make himself rich. When Teenager enters business with the Lucchese family, whose boss has a line on the purest heroin in New York, success seems all but assured—until a scorching affair between the boss’s wife and a young lawyer named Maximo threatens to ruin the entire operation. Their passion is instantaneous, but Teenager will make certain that before they can be together, the Bronx is going to burn. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Classic columns from the legendary New York journalist—“a master of the tough-talking, thoroughly researched, contentious, street-wise vignette” (San Francisco Chronicle).   Although his career spans decades, the seven years that Jimmy Breslin spent at the New YorkDaily News sparked some of his finest work. When New York City tumbled into economic and social chaos at the end of the 1970s, Breslin was there. In his brief, insightful columns, he looked at the city not from the top down but from the bottom up. Eschewing the view of politicians, socialites, and captains of industry, Breslin’s heroes are men like Jim Moran, the cop who drove John Lennon to the emergency room after he was shot, or Barney Baker, an ex-boxer who served as bodyguard to mobster Meyer Lansky. These are average people who see big things, and Breslin is their herald. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

As a city worker and former war hero tumbles into alcoholism, his wife fights to hold on to her newfound freedom Owney Morrison has walked the catacombs underneath New York City since he was eleven. His father was a sandhog—a tunnel worker—and the first to introduce him to the miles of passageways snaking beneath the ground. Now an adult, back from Vietnam with a Medal of Honor and no work prospects, Owney takes up the family legacy, digging and maintaining the tunnels that provide the city with water. It is dangerous work, and at the end of each shift he deserves a few drinks. But when alcohol takes control of him, his wife Dolores is left with a decision. Should she take her baby daughter and cut ties with her husband, or stay and risk being dragged under by a man who feels safest one hundred feet below the street? At once witty and moving, Table Money is a memorable portrait of family and marriage in modern America. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

A Catholic priest sets his sights on sin’s frontline: New York CityFather D’Arcy Cosgrove honed his special talents during a mission to Africa, where he ministered to locals about the dangers of sex. To Cosgrove, sex is a menace to societies all across the world, with no country more stricken than the United States. And so, to fight his war on impropriety, Cosgrove moves to New York City, a place he believes is rotten with lust. Cosgrove and his lieutenant—a towering African named Great Big—land in the wilds of an impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood, not far from the site of a heinous hate crime. There the two crusaders start their assault on immorality, where their attacks always land below the belt. They’re determined to save New York—as long as it doesn’t corrupt them first. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Tough, funny, moving fiction from the New York Times–bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist.   Jimmy Breslin was not only “the biggest, the baddest, the brashest, the best columnist in New York City,” he was also an outstanding New York Times–bestselling novelist, equally comfortable with comedy and tragedy, often intermixing the two (New YorkDaily News). Collected here are four of his best-loved novels, including three New York Times bestsellers.  World Without End, Amen: Hoping to find redemption, disgraced, alcoholic NYPD cop Dermot Davey travels to Ulster—the heart of the increasingly bloody Irish Troubles—to find the father who abandoned him as a child, in this New York Times bestseller.   “Excellent . . . Breslin writes prose in a New York idiom with a shrewdness all his own.” —The New York Times  The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight: Breslin’s New York Times–bestselling, madcap novel of the sloppiest turf war ever launched by the Brooklyn mob was the basis for the hilarious movie starring Jerry Orbach as the witless Kid Sally Palumbo and a young pre–Godfather II Robert De Niro.   “A very funny novel . . . and a good one.” —The Village Voice  Table Money: This New York Times bestseller “about flesh-and-blood working people” is the story of Owney Morrison, a Vietnam vet who returns home to Queens with a Congressional Medal of Honor and few prospects (Studs Terkel). Owney takes up the family legacy as a sandhog—a tunnel worker. But when his drinking gets out of control, his wife Dolores considers leaving with their baby daughter rather than being dragged down by a man who feels safest one hundred feet below the street.   “[A] serious literary novel, a superior work of fiction.” —The New York Times  Forsaking All Others: Puerto Rican drug dealer Teenager will stop at nothing to dominate the South Bronx narcotics trade—but a scorching affair between a crime boss’s daughter who’s literally married to the mob and Teenager’s childhood friend, legal aid lawyer Maximo Escobar, threatens to ruin the entire operation. Before it’s all over, the South Bronx is going to burn.   “A novel of considerable complexity and richness.” —Chicago Tribune

Colorful, riveting reportage from a one-of-a-kind Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times–bestselling author.   In his career as a legendary New York City newspaper columnist, Jimmy Breslin “leveled the powerful and elevated the powerless for more than fifty years with brick-hard words and a jagged-glass wit” (The New York Times).  How the Good Guys Finally Won: Following the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, as evidence increasingly mounted against President Richard Nixon, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, the Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, led the charge calling for impeachment. In this New York Times bestseller, Breslin’s blow-by-blow, conviction-by-conviction account is a gripping reminder of how O’Neill and his colleagues brought justice to those who abused their power, and revived America after the greatest political scandal in its history.   “Breslin’s reporting is superb and so is his prose, his insights keen and often startling, his wit unceasing.” —Chicago Tribune  The World According to Breslin: In an illustrious career that spanned decades, the seven years that Breslin spent at the New YorkDaily News sparked some of his finest work. When New York City tumbled into economic and social chaos at the end of the 1970s, Breslin was there. In this collection of classic columns, he looks at the city not from the top down but from the bottom up, heralding the heroism of average New Yorkers.   “Superb . . . a master of the tough-talking, thoroughly researched, contentious, street-wise vignette.” —San Francisco Chronicle  The World of Jimmy Breslin: In the 1960s, as the once-proud New York Herald Tribune spiraled into bankruptcy, the brightest light in its pages was an ebullient young columnist named Jimmy Breslin. While ordinary columnists wrote about politics, culture, or the economy, Breslin’s chief topics were the city and himself. He was chummy with cops, arsonists, and thieves, and told their stories with grace, wit, and lightning-quick prose. Whether covering the five boroughs, Vietnam, or the death of John F. Kennedy, Breslin managed to find great characters wherever he went.   “Breslin’s touch is absolutely sure.” —The Washington Post Book World

Here, back in print, is Jimmy Breslin's marvelous account of the improbable saga of the New York Mets' first year, as Bill Veeck notes in his Introduction, "preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure." Indeed the 1962 Mets were the worst major league baseball team ever to take the field. (The title of the book is a quote from Casey Stengel, their manager at the time.) Breslin casts the Mets, who lost 120 games out of a possible 162 that year, as a lovable bunch of losers. And, he argues, they were good for baseball, coming as a welcome antidote to "the era of the businessman in sports...as dry and agonizing a time as you would want to see." Although they were written forty years ago, many of Breslin's comments will strike a chord with today's sports fan, fed up with the growing commercialism of the games. Against this trend Breslin sets the exploits of "Marvelous" Marv Throneberry, Stengel, and the rest of the hapless Mets."Wonderful."—Charles Salzberg, New York Times."A touching, enjoyable, and interesting addition to anybody's sports reading list."—Patrick Conway