In 1919, Lewis E. Lawes moved his wife and young daughters into the warden's mansion at Sing Sing prison. They shared a yard with 1, 096 of the toughest inmates in the world-murderers, rapists, and thieves who Lawes alone believed capable of redemption. Adamantly opposed to the death penalty, Lawes presided over 300 executions. His progressive ideas shocked many, but he taught the nation that a prison was a community. He allowed a kidnapper to care for his children and a cutthroat to shave him every morning. He organized legendary football games for his "boys," and befriended Hollywood greats such as Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart. This is "A story almost too good to be true, but too true to miss." -Mario Cuomo

Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners

History

Blumenthal, Ralph

Americas

St.Martin's Press

From the riotous days of Prohibition and the Jazz Age to the brutal awakening of Pearl Harbor, one man ruled the fate of America's most dangerous criminals. He was Lewis E. Lawes, warden of Sing Sing prison, the Big House up the river, who believed that no man was beyond redemption. Warden Lawes couldn't banish the electric chair (though he tried) but he knew that humanitarian care and good morale provided better security than the stoutest walls. Lawes befriended the Hollywood greats, Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy and Harry Warner, opening Sing Sing to the movies and exposing prisoners to the glamour of the silver screen. He brought Babe Ruth to Sing Sing, fielded a winning football team called The Black Sheep that brought gridiron glory to the circuit known as the Big Pen, and ran training shops, school classes and culture programs.Truly, Warden Lawes made Sing Sing sing.But Lawes was no pushover. He brought law to Sing Sing, a tale that comes alive in the hands of prize-winning New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal.He killed on orders from the state, consigning 303 condemned men and women to the electric chair. But he crusaded fiercely against the death penalty as useless and preached that every man deserved a second chance, even if, in the end, he faced a terrible betrayal.Lawes taught the nation that a jail was a lockup but a prison was a community. With his perfect name and flawless eye for fashion, Lawes took over as the ninth warden in eight years -- at 39, the youngest man to lead the century-old institution, then overflowing with more than a thousand hardened criminals and luckless youths. Vice was rife -- bribery, alcohol, drugs and sex. The political bosses held sway, swinging deals for favored inmates. Enemies accused him of coddling prisoners but he ridiculed the charge. No one was coddled on a food budget of 18 cents a day. Lawes lived with his wife and daughters in a Victorian mansion abutting the cellblock, where he was shaved each morning by a prison barber convicted of slashing a man's throat, the household cook was a murderer, and his youngest daughter's favorite babysitter was serving twenty-five years for kidnapping. Lawes tamed the tyrannical Charles E. Chapin who had terrorized generations of reporters as the editor of Joseph Pulitzer's Evening World before murdering his wife and winding up as Lawes's favorite horticulturist, the Rose Man of Sing Sing. Lawes championed the advent of radio and used it to inspire his prisoners and educate the public on penal reform. He wrote film scripts and radio plays and dramas and best-selling books. But in the end, his finest tribute came not from the mighty but a lowly prisoner in the yard who muttered, to no one in particular, "There was a right guy."

St. Martin's: Griffin

In a companion to the exhibition at the New York Historical Society, an inside story of the Stork Club, one of New York's most glamorous clubs reveals its hidden underworld connections, from its founding during the speakeasy era through the height of its popularity in the 1960s. 40,000 first printing.

Stork Club : America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society

Little,Brown & Co

The enthralling, definitive account -- with guns, diamonds, and champagne that never stops -- of the world's most storied nightspot, where starlets stalked millionaires, where Jack wooed Jackie, and where Walter Winchell snubbed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking Education & Reference

Back Bay Books

Rare, real glimpses of the Mafia in action punctuate this shocking account of the FBI's breakthrough in the Pizza Connection case. This success launched the careers of FBI Director Louis Freeh and New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Features a new introduction.

Last Days of the Sicilians

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Random House Value Publishing

An award-winning journalist recounts the suspense- and danger-filled Pizza Connection Case, which involved Mafia killings, secret meetings, stakeouts, billions of dollars in heroin, and a six-year FBI investigation. Reprint.

Pocket

An undercover narcotics cop tells how he caught his own daughter selling drugs and how his shattered family faced the crisis and came out stronger in the end. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Once Through the Heart

Simon&Schuster

Last Days of the Sicilians: At War with the Mafia: the FBI Assault on the Pizza Connection

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

An expose of the intricate and far-reaching web of the Sicilian Mafia in America and of the concentrated FBI investigation that cracked open a billion-dollar drug racket

Crown

The secret, unexpurgated FBI tapes of John Gotti feature transcripts from his recent trial and describe how the mob really works at the highest levels

THE GOTTI TAPES (Sammy the Bull Gravano)

Three Rivers Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Blumenthal, Ralph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Blumenthal, Ralph

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Blumenthal, Ralph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners

Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners

Stork Club : America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society

Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society

Last Days of the Sicilians

Last Days of the Sicilians

Once Through the Heart

Last Days of the Sicilians: At War with the Mafia: the FBI Assault on the Pizza Connection

Last Days of the Sicilians

THE GOTTI TAPES (Sammy the Bull Gravano)