1/4: The gritty and violent melting pot: 1/4: Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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1/4: The gritty and violent melting pot: 1/4: Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto
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https://www.amazon.com/Smalltime-Story-My-Family-Mob/dp/0393245586/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America.
The best-selling author Russell Shorto, praised for his incisive works of narrative history, never thought to write about his own past. He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence. Then an elderly relative prodded: You’re a writer―what are you gonna do about the story?
Smalltime is a mob story straight out of central casting―but with a difference, for the small-town mob, which stretched from Schenectady to Fresno, is a mostly unknown world. The location is the brawny postwar factory town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The setting is City Cigar, a storefront next to City Hall, behind which Russ and his brother-in-law, “Little Joe,” operate a gambling empire and effectively run the town.
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, it's the Harry Bikers here, and we are here to help you. |
| 0:03.5 | Yes, new listeners, to get more from your food. |
| 0:06.8 | We are indeed more character, more delight and more flavour. |
| 0:11.3 | Yeah, do we know a proper taste to do it? |
| 0:13.4 | With nor, of course, the nation's favourite stock. |
| 0:16.4 | That's right, so whether it's a chicken or chickpea comfort and curry, |
| 0:20.5 | or a hearty beef or bean chili for dinner tonight, |
| 0:23.6 | just be sure you give it more with nor. |
| 0:27.3 | It's a very high call, oh, 8731141. |
| 0:39.7 | I'm John Bachelors. |
| 0:41.4 | This is the new John Bachelors show, CBS Audio Network. |
| 0:44.9 | I welcome the historian and narrator, Russell Shortow, |
| 0:50.7 | distinguished for having written books about men |
| 0:52.8 | having about the Revolutionary War, but now he takes us to a small town in Western |
| 0:57.6 | Pennsylvania, famous for a catastrophe, Johnstown. |
| 1:02.0 | The catastrophe happened some years before our story. |
| 1:06.0 | Nonetheless, it makes Johnstown a famous version of a Maracana |
| 1:11.8 | between the Industrial Revolution, and here we are in the 21st century. |
| 1:16.1 | Russell, congratulations and good evening. |
| 1:19.4 | The book is entitled Small Time. |
| 1:21.9 | It is subtitled A Story of My Family, Your Family, Russell, |
| 1:26.0 | and The Mob. We go to an event that was critical |
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