Gloria Swanson
The Ultimate Star

Stephen Michael Shearer

Unless you are a silent film buff, or grew up with an appreciation of older movies, many of us may have first been exposed to Gloria Swanson (or the idea of her), by the skit on The Carol Burnett Show parodying Swanson's role in Sunset Boulevard. And sadly, even if you become interested in classic film, many of Swanson's silent films are lost to the ages. This engaging biography still manages, through research, stills, and memorabilia, to provide colorful descriptions of these works.

Beginning with her humble upbringing in Chicago, you are taken both through the development of her career, and the development of Hollywood and the motion picture industry. Gloria Swanson's career spanned all of it, from the days of silent film darlings such as herself, Mary Pickford, and other notables, all the way through her final appearances on stage and interviews (a fate that often befalls "out of fashion" and older actors and personalities). There are two sections of photos which may be surprisingly familiar to those who may not know the name or origin of many iconic photos and looks.

In addition, the book does not shy away from the sometimes shocking details of her private life, from her disengagement with her children's upbringing, to her many husbands, paramours and affairs. These are all treated with thoroughness and detail, without devolving into tabloid type smut. Producers, marriages of convenience, and even the founder of a powerful American political dynasty are all there. It also covers the feuds between her and co-stars, producers, and movie companies, giving both personal and professional glimpses of the evolution of a then-new business.

I would definitely recommend this one, although you may want to not have others in your "to be read" stack for a bit, as you may just find yourself online hunting down snippets, and the occasional entirety of classic films.

Deal With the Devil
The FBI'S Secret Thirty-Year Relationship With a Mafia Killer

Peter Lance

First off, this is not a light read. This dense look at the New York Mafia centers around one captain, Greg Scarpa Sr., and ranges from the 60's civil rights movement, to the World Trade Center truck bomb, 9/11 and beyond. Through all of this, the corruption and sometimes willful incompetence of government agencies is brought to light

Using FOIA requested memos, and recently declassified or other publicly released information, Peter Lance takes you from the government's use of mafia enforcers to elicit confessions from civil rights era white supremacists through questionable tactics, (allowing the government agencies to skirt law and ethics on technicalities, since they weren't the ones employing these methods directly), to botched investigations and ignored opportunities to prevent current day terrorist attacks. The documentation of mafia methods, rituals, and history is just as well documented through interviews and police records. Some of the information is unsurprising, as pop culture and other works have given the world a pretty good idea of many Mafia procedures and codes, but other information horrifyingly demonstrates the lengths the government at federal, state, and local levels is willing to go to protect themselves, whether preemptively issuing immunity to their own agents engaged in criminal and ethical wrong-doing, or setting up innocent police officers to cover up the leaks and incompetence of those higher in the chain.

Once again, I definitely can't say this is a light or easy read, but it is definitely educational, and thorough. Copious documentation of sources, as well as reproduction of the actual government memos, reports, and crime files gives a solid background to the story. The story itself though, may leave you feeling hopeless about the state of the world, and the fact that levels and methods of corruption haven't changed through the years.