New York, NY: Harper Collins (2009)

As new in paperback.

Bringing together long-buried historical information and research in modern-day Havana—including interviews with the era’s key survivors—award-winning journalist T. J. English offers a riveting, multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution, and international conflict. Havana Nocturne takes readers back to the years when Cuba was a veritable devil’s playground for mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos and launched an unprecedented tourist boom. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others who would lead the country’s disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government and its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory.

T. J. English is the author of Paddy Whacked and The Westies. He has written for the Irish America Magazine, Esquire, Playboy, and New York. He lives in New York City and San Francisco, CA, where he teaches a course on organized crime at the New College of California.