In 1929 all the organised crime bosses from across America met in Altantic City to carve up the nation and agree to terms with one another… or maybe they didn’t. Bill Tonelli examines the history of this fateful meeting and the claims (most written decades later) about what happened, who was there etc. And his conclusion is that while something happened, it’s not the giant meetup that it is made out to be. Oft quoted sources have for decades been debunked, yet are still used. Contemporary articles from the period of the meeting don’t give the impression of anything like what the common belief is (did the reports not notice the other 50 mob bosses there when they reported?). Maybe the 1929 story is, like many gangster stories, a large lie that no one disputed, because it worked well for reputations to it to appear true.
Bill Tonelli writes in an extremely conversational tone, that seems almost out of place with the investigative work being done by him. The structure is a little strange, book ending with a discussion of the cover photo – another event that is in question. The first half is basically a textual analysis of other books and places where this has been written about, pointing out faults and errors. The last half is the author putting together what he believes actually did happen, based on the information he could uncover.
An interesting book, well worth the time. It was very well researched.
Narration by Kevin Gallagher is good. Well paced and easy to listen to. He does do voices, emotions etc. for the ‘characters’ and quotes in the book, which makes it really easy to follow what is the author and what is from quotes. It also makes for an entertaining read. I really liked his work for making a non fiction book come alive.
I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.