Grey: 921 books

Richard Kauffman was a noteworthy star in baseball, football, and basketball at Susquehanna University, in the early 20th Century. He also coached the teams on which he played. My E-Book looks at his life as an athlete, as well as his ancestry. I have used ancestry records to detail much about Kauffman's...

Fred Wacker was a Formula 1 driver from the Chicago area who drove for Gordini among other marques. He became President of the Chicago Chapter of the Sports Car Club of America. Fred stressed safety issues, especially crowd control and the safety of sports car drivers. Wacker married a singer named...

Varina Howell Davis was the granddaughter of Richard Howell, the third governor of New Jersey. Her father, William Burr Howell, came to Natchez, Mississippi where Varina was raised in the Antebellum South. William Burr Howell's bankruptcy during his daughter's youth affected her throughout...

My E-Book looks at George Washington Keefe from the perspective of a player and family member. He was the son of a diabled Pennsylvania Union Civil War soldier. Charles Keefe was a cabinetmaker who drew a pension after being wounded as a reservist in combat with the Pennsylvania infantry. His son,...

Dutch Schultz made the big time of racketeers when he entered the business of speakeasies. From a respectable Bronx family Schultz served time on Roosevelt Island for a minor offense that he committed in 1919. When he was paroled he got into speakeasies, partnering with James Noe after a brief stint...

Morris "Moe" Kleinman was a bootlegger in Cleveland who switched into gambling rackets at the end of Prohibition. Kleinman was associated with Louis Rothkopf, Moe Dalitz, Samuel Tucker and other Cleveland mobsters of the 1930s and later. My e-book looks at Kleinman's criminal career. particularly...

Bradley University was among the best college basketball teams in the United States entering the 1949-1950 basketball season. Some observers and pundits believed they were the finest. The Braves were led by their 5'8" point guard Gene Melchiorre. The star player and two of his teammates were...

Miroslawa was a citizen and student of Poland during the rule of a military dictatorship. 1984 was the year after my graduation from college at UNC-Chapel Hill. An avid shortwave radio listener, I wrote to a Bulgarian periodical that transmitted a message during Radio Sofia's English language...

Sonny Liston began to rise rapidly among the ranks of professional boxers beginning in the early months of 1958. This was a fighter who had turned professional in 1953 following a stint as a Gold Gloves boxer in St. Louis. During a 21 month period from 1956-1958 he hardly fought at all however. Why...

Sandro Botticelli and Simonetta Vespucci depend upon one another for their fame in many respects. The Genoan beauty who came to Florence as a teenager was the subject of many of Botticelli's paintings, including his masterpiece, The Birth of Venus. Had there been no Simonetta Botticelli might have...

Len Dawson was a Pro Bowl quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1960s and 1970s. He led the American Football League team when it won the World Championship of pro football in 1970. A family man, he resided with his wife and two children in a luxurious home in suburban Kansas City. He was...

The Campisi crime family of New Jersey was a quickly ascending organization in the early 1970s. There were eight different Campisis, all of them blood related. The murder of Samuel Carbone was one of a series of gangland murders involving the Bruno and Campisi family members. It is likely that Carbone's...

Frank Funzi Tieri became the Boss of Bosses among New York's five crime families following the death of Carlo Gambino in 1976. Tieri was involved in gambling and loan sharking to a large extent. He was saved from serving a prison term of nearly a decade when he died of colon cancer in 1981. Funzi...

Josephine Baker was the epitome of the American emigre who found her niche in Paris during the years after the First World War. She arrived in France in 1925 following a stint as a bit player in Shuffle Along, the first all-Negro Broadway play. She performed her trademark black bottom dance to the...