Booknote: American Gangster and Other Tales of New York

Mark Jacobson (author) and Malcolm Hillgartner (audio narrator), American Gangster and Other Tales of New York. Ashland, OR: Blackstone Audio, 2015. ISBN: 9781481582957.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: essays, biography, true crime
Format: online audiobook
Source: Overdrive system of the Madison County (KY) Public Library

This book is a collection of essays and stories. The main story is the tale of Frank Lucas, the heroin dealer who went on to become the basis of the film American Gangster; Denzel Washington portrayed Lucas in the film. I picked this up via Overdrive out of curiosity since I saw it was the basis of the film. Turns out the book contains some other essays on mob life and other tales of New York City. Like many collections, some tales were more interesting than others. The book does give a pretty good portrayal of parts of New York City at the time.

The book starts with the story of Frank Lucas. The author notes that  he did spend time with Lucas, as Lucas by then was telling his story. We note the irony of Lucas claiming patriotism. He smuggled heroin in coffins of dead American soldiers returned from the Vietnam War. However, he clarifies it was not put in the body bags with  the bodies, but in the coffins. He claims he hired good carpenters to build coffins with false bottoms, and it was there the drug was smuggled, so as not to be sloppy nor disrespect a corpse. At one point, even Henry Kissinger's plane, was used by Lucas to smuggle drugs back into the U.S. Talk about brazen. Go figure.

The author also points out that had Lucas been born wealthy, he could have been a corrupt, powerful politician. He was born poor however, so he went on to become a rich gangster and drug dealer. To be honest, that does not say much about American society. If rich, an option is to become powerful and corrupt. If poor, the option then is to become powerful and corrupt as an outright criminal, as opposed to a white collar criminal, and rich in the process.

For the book as a whole, the author states the stories he presents here are different than his previous book. He does note that much of what he writes  about now does not exist anymore. For instance, Lucas' reign as a heroin dealer is long gone. The rest of the book collects essays he wrote for other things. Some of them are interesting and humorous.

Here is a sampling of some topics presented in the book:

• Insight: it is harder for crooks to extort a place like Home Depot versus a mom and pop place. Why? A place like Home Depot is just too big. 
• Find out where the most comfy couch in New York City resides. Plus, there is a good interesting story of a cigar maker in Chapter 2. 
• There is a pretty humorous piece on filming a zombie movie. 
• An essay on Charlie Rangel, the long time Harlem congressman. 
• A good look at Chinatown,its gangs, and how the place has changed over time. A big part of the change is outside investors from places like Hong Kong; they can modernize the place, but also a part of the past is lost, not to mention the gangs' influence lessens.
• On editors, they should write too, not just edit. So they keep in touch with  the agony that writing can be.

In the end, I liked the book. It was no big deal, but it did have some interesting stories of the city from the 1970s or so. The narration was good as well.

3 out of 5 stars.