Miami Babylon PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Miami Babylon PDF full book. Access full book title Miami Babylon by Gerald Posner. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Gerald Posner
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781416576563
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Here, in all its neon-colored, cocaine-fueled glory, is the never-before-told story of the making of Miami Beach. Gerald Posner, author of the groundbreaking investigations Case Closed and Why America Slept, has uncovered the hair-raising political-financial-criminal history of the Beach and reveals a tale that, in the words of one character, "makes Scarface look like a documentary." From its beginnings in the 1890s, the Beach has been a place made by visionaries and hustlers. During Prohibition, Al Capone had to muscle into its bootlegging and gambling businesses. After December 1941, when the Beach was the training ground for half a million army recruits, even the war couldn't stop the party. After a short postwar boom, the city's luck gave out. The big hotels went bankrupt, the crime rate rose, and the tourists moved on to Disney World and the Caribbean. Even after the Beach hosted both national political conventions in 1972, nobody would have imagined that this sandy backwater of run-down hotels and high crime would soon become one of the country's most important cultural centers. But in 1981, 125,000 Cubans arrived by the boatload. The empty streets of South Beach, lined with dilapidated Art Deco hotels, were about to be changed irrevocably by the culture of money that moved in behind cocaine and crime. Posner takes us inside the intertwined lives of politicians, financiers, nightclub owners, and real estate developers who have fed the Beach's unquenchable desire for wealth, flash, and hype: the German playboy who bought the entire tip of South Beach with $100 million of questionable money; the mayoral candidate who said, "If you can't take their money, drink their liquor, mess with their women, and then vote against them, you aren't cut out for politics"; the Staten Island thug who became king of the South Beach nightclubs only to have his empire unravel and saved himself by testifying against the mob; the campaign manager who calls himself the "Prince of Darkness" and got immunity from prosecution in a fraud case by cooperating with the FBI against his colleagues; and the former Washington, D.C., developer who played hardball with city hall and became the Beach's first black hotel owner. From the mid-level coke dealers and their suitcases of cash to the questionable billions that financed the ocean-view condo towers, the Beach has seen it all. Posner's singular report tells the real story of how this small urban beach community was transformed into a world-class headquarters for American culture within a generation. It is a story built by dreamers and schemers. And a steroid-injected cautionary tale.
Author: Gerald Posner
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781416576563
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Here, in all its neon-colored, cocaine-fueled glory, is the never-before-told story of the making of Miami Beach. Gerald Posner, author of the groundbreaking investigations Case Closed and Why America Slept, has uncovered the hair-raising political-financial-criminal history of the Beach and reveals a tale that, in the words of one character, "makes Scarface look like a documentary." From its beginnings in the 1890s, the Beach has been a place made by visionaries and hustlers. During Prohibition, Al Capone had to muscle into its bootlegging and gambling businesses. After December 1941, when the Beach was the training ground for half a million army recruits, even the war couldn't stop the party. After a short postwar boom, the city's luck gave out. The big hotels went bankrupt, the crime rate rose, and the tourists moved on to Disney World and the Caribbean. Even after the Beach hosted both national political conventions in 1972, nobody would have imagined that this sandy backwater of run-down hotels and high crime would soon become one of the country's most important cultural centers. But in 1981, 125,000 Cubans arrived by the boatload. The empty streets of South Beach, lined with dilapidated Art Deco hotels, were about to be changed irrevocably by the culture of money that moved in behind cocaine and crime. Posner takes us inside the intertwined lives of politicians, financiers, nightclub owners, and real estate developers who have fed the Beach's unquenchable desire for wealth, flash, and hype: the German playboy who bought the entire tip of South Beach with $100 million of questionable money; the mayoral candidate who said, "If you can't take their money, drink their liquor, mess with their women, and then vote against them, you aren't cut out for politics"; the Staten Island thug who became king of the South Beach nightclubs only to have his empire unravel and saved himself by testifying against the mob; the campaign manager who calls himself the "Prince of Darkness" and got immunity from prosecution in a fraud case by cooperating with the FBI against his colleagues; and the former Washington, D.C., developer who played hardball with city hall and became the Beach's first black hotel owner. From the mid-level coke dealers and their suitcases of cash to the questionable billions that financed the ocean-view condo towers, the Beach has seen it all. Posner's singular report tells the real story of how this small urban beach community was transformed into a world-class headquarters for American culture within a generation. It is a story built by dreamers and schemers. And a steroid-injected cautionary tale.
Author: Pat Frank
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060741872
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Get Book Here
Book Description
The classic apocalyptic novel that stunned the world.
Author: Roben Farzad
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399583254
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Get Book Here
Book Description
The wild, true story of the Mutiny, the hotel and club that embodied the decadence of Miami’s cocaine cowboys heyday—and an inspiration for the blockbuster film, Scarface... In the seventies, coke hit Miami with the full force of a hurricane, and no place attracted dealers and dopers like Coconut Grove’s Mutiny at Sailboat Bay. Hollywood royalty, rock stars, and models flocked to the hotel’s club to order bottle after bottle of Dom and to snort lines alongside narcos, hit men, and gunrunners, all while marathon orgies burned upstairs in elaborate fantasy suites. Amid the boatloads of powder and cash reigned the new kings of Miami: three waves of Cuban immigrants vying to dominate the trafficking of one of the most lucrative commodities ever known to man. But as the kilos—and bodies—began to pile up, the Mutiny became target number one for law enforcement. Based on exclusive interviews and never-before-seen documents, Hotel Scarface is a portrait of a city high on excess and greed, an extraordinary work of investigative journalism offering an unprecedented view of the rise and fall of cocaine—and the Mutiny—in Miami.
Author: Laura Lee Huttenbach
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 0806538449
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Get Book Here
Book Description
In 1975, Robert “Raven” Kraft made a New Year’s Resolution to run eight miles on Miami’s South Beach each evening. Over 125,000 miles and seven hurricanes later, he has not missed one sunset—and he has changed the lives of thousands who have run with him. From all fifty states and over 85 countries, across all age groups and backgrounds, people come to run with Raven. In the process they find friendship, inspiration—and a nickname. Among them is author Laura Lee “White Lightning” Huttenbach, who has logged over a thousand miles of Raven Runs. Here she explores the stories of dozens of others about why they started running with Raven—and why they keep coming back. Raven is a legend of the running world, and his story is an invaluable reminder that the journey means little without the connections forged along the way. “Raven left an indelible impression upon me, as he has countless others. Raven, long may you run.” —Dean Karnazes, New York Times bestselling author of Ultramarathon Man “An inspiring tale of unbreakable discipline and one-of-a-kind endurance.” —Gerald Posner, New York Times bestselling author of Miami Babylon “Raven’s tale of perseverance, understanding, and courage will inspire anyone.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Steven Gaines
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307346285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture. Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping. Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords. From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance. Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.
Author: David Bulit
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1626199167
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Get Book Here
Book Description
Miami architecture is world renowned, but many historic treasures have been forgotten. The Richmond Naval Air Station was a blimp base destroyed by hurricane in 1945. A Cold War missile base lies covered in graffiti. Homestead's old Aerojet complex was originally used in the testing and construction of experimental rockets but was slowly demolished as part of a project to revitalize the Everglades. The Miami Marine Stadium was declared unsafe after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and stands abandoned today. Author and "Abandoned Florida" blogger David Bulit revives the history and secrets of the Magic City's vanishing gems.
Author: Jack Gresham
Publisher: BookPros, LLC
ISBN: 0982314000
Category : Bank robberies
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Get Book Here
Book Description
In Washington, D.C., a cell of Afghan terrorists-armed with a nuclear weapon-conspire to rob the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of 18 billion dollars. They plan to fund and curry favor with Mohammed of Babylon, an international negotiator and proponent of peaceful jihad who is rumored to be the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam. Mohammed, shocked to find himself the center of religious extremism, attempts to right the wrong done to the United States without betraying the trust of his people.Meanwhile, the government's investigation into the terrorist cell behind the threat uncovers a more frightening plot. An international corporation called Global Consultant Ltd. appears to be funding and manufacturing global terrorism for their own purposes. The corporation, driven by greed rather than ideology, has the feds wondering how far their influence reaches and what it will take to counter the terrorism already set in motion.
Author: Nicholas Griffin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501191039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book Here
Book Description
"MIAMI 1980, by journalist and author Nicholas Griffin, is a narrative of a pivotal but forgotten year in American history. With a cast that includes iconic characters such as Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, and Janet Reno, this slice of history is brought to life through fascinating, intertwining personal stories. At the core, there's Edna Buchanan, a beautiful reporter for the Miami Herald who breaks the story on the wrongful murder of a black man, and the resultant police cover-up; Captain Marshall Frank, the hardboiled homicide detective tasked with investigating the murder; and Mayor Maurice Ferre, the charismatic politician who watches the case, and the city, fall apart. A roller coaster of national politics and international diplomacy, these three figures cross paths and socio-economic lines as their city explodes in one of the worst race riots in American history; as over 120,000 Cuban refugees land on the Miami coast; and as foreign drug cartels flood the city with cocaine and infiltrate all levels of law enforcement and government. In a battle of wills, Buchanan has to keep up with the 150% uptick in murders; Captain Frank has to scrub and then rebuild his police department; and Mayor Ferre has to find a way to reconstruct his smoldering city. Against all odds, they persevere, and a stronger, more vibrant Miami is forged in the crucible. But the new Miami, literally built on corruption and drug money, will have severe ramifications for the rest of the country"--
Author: Sam Verdeja
Publisher: Reedy Press LLC
ISBN: 1935806203
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 801
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book is a collection of more than thirty essays by renowned scholars, historians, journalists, and media professionals that portray the experience of Cubans exiled in the United States and other countries in the last sixty years.
Author: Seth A. Weitz
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817361472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Get Book Here
Book Description
"In 'City of Hope, City of Rage: Miami, 1968-1994,' Seth A. Weitz examines the transformative period when the young city-founded under Jim Crow in 1896 and searching for an identity after the upheavals of the 1950s and 60s-began to strive for maturity. Tracing three turbulent decades marked by mass immigration, racially motivated uprisings, economic inequity, rising crime, and social change, 'City of Hope, City of Rage' tells the story of Miami's evolution from a predominantly white southern city and vacation community into what is now a global, predominantly Hispanic metropolis with an international tourist base-one which nevertheless remains one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Drawing on numerous primary sources, including one-on-one interviews with people who lived the history, Weitz assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait of his hometown's coming of age, returning again and again to the question of how Miami is defined, who gets to define it, and, by extension, the parameters of civic identity and belonging in an increasingly cosmopolitan network of communities"
