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How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution
William Morrow
June 2008
On Sale: June 3, 2008
416 pages
ISBN: 0061147710
EAN: 9780061147715
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past
are everywhere—the old hotel-casinos, vintage American
cars, and flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that
is widely familiar and often romanticized, but little
understood. In Havana Nocturne, T. J. English offers a
riveting, multifaceted true tale of organized crime,
political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution, and
international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of
the Mob in Havana and the event that would overshadow it,
the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive
regime throughout the 1950s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky and
Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To
them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for
the future of the American Mob in the post-Prohibition
years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it
came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant
Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated
strong ties with the Cuban government and in particular the
brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key
mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in
motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in
its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos in
Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete
with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest
celebrities, the most beautiful women, and gambling galore.
But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che
Guevara, and others who would lead the country's
disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government and
its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English
captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with
English's own research in Havana—including interviews with
the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back
to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's
playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together
the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious
criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr. and Albert
Anastasia—and Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting,
up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest
dream in Havana—and how Fidel Castro trumped it all with
the Cuban Revolution.
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