Product Description

In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—the old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars, and flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar and often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T. J. English offers a riveting, multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution, and international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana and the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution.

As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 1950s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the American Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government and in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion.

Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women, and gambling galore. 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.

Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr. and Albert Anastasia—and Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—and how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the Cuban Revolution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-01
• Released on: 2008-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Old Havana mambos on the brink of the abyss in this chronicle of Cuba in the decades before the 1959 revolution. True-crime writer English (Paddy Whacked) presents an empire-building saga in which the "Havana Mob" of American gangsters, led by visionary financier Meyer Lansky, controlled Cuba. Empowered by permissive gambling laws and payoffs to dictator Fulgencio Batista, the Mafia poured millions into posh hotels, casinos and nightclubs, skimmed huge profits and sought to make Havana its financial headquarters. The results: exuberant nightlife, a giddy Afro-Cuban jazz scene, sordid backroom sex shows and the occasional grisly gangland hit. English revels in purple prose ("the island seethed like a bitch with a low-grade fever") and decadent details, including an orgy with Frank Sinatra and a bevy of prostitutes that was interrupted by autograph-seeking Girl Scouts and a nun. But his estimate of the importance of the Havana mob and its "showdown" with Castro's puritanical rebels seems inflated. More supplicant than suzerain to Batista, the mob focused on internecine feuds and paid little attention to the brewing insurrection. The casinos, hotels and nightclubs were all the mob owned-but they sure threw one hell of a party. Photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sam Giancana, author of Double Cross
"Finally, the definitive book has been written on the Mob’s heyday in Cuba. Havana Nocturne is at once compelling and incisive-an entertaining page-tuner that will both shock and inform."

Legs McNeil, author of The Other Hollywood and Please Kill Me
"Sex and drugs and rockin’ mambo! Havana Nocturne is a dazzling parade through the Mob’s interests in Cuba. A must for Mob fans everywhere."

Customer Reviews

(4.5) "The Little Man had gambled everything- and lost."


English's Havana fairly reeks with the aroma of cigars, tropical perfume and the scent of money, mob figures from American crime families finally realizing their dream post-World War II, their heyday 1952-1959. All the swaggering figures are here; Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Albert Anastasia, Santo Trafficante, the tough guys who made their fortunes during Prohibition, breeding plans for wealth distribution based on the corruption of an island government, exploitation of union pension funds, public utilities and financial institutions, spreading the wealth among crime families, the emerging Havana Mob based in Cuba. But none of this would be possible without an insider to grease the way. Thus El Presidente Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar, a brutal, pragmatic dictator who gains control through a bloodless coup, becomes coconspirator in a grand adventure, at least for the mob and its beneficiaries, the cream of decadent society who harvest the fruits of criminal enterprise, gambling, narcotics and murder all dressed up in flamboyant hotels casinos, nightclub floor shows, resorts, fast cars and women.

Celebrities flock to Cuba, beautiful women adorning the arms of hard-core murderers in expensive suits, the hypnotic beat of the mambo drowning out the cries of the poor and dispossessed. In the paradise English describes so beautifully, the images are stark, the glamour and glitter of money and excess contrasted with devastating poverty and neglected social programs endured by those Cubans not caught up in the magic of power and profit. Is there no one to speak for them? Of course there is: the revolutionary voice of Fidel Castro. The Havana Mob isn't the driving force behind Castro's revolutionary zeal, but it certainly offers fertile ground for discontent, an easy target for the rag-tag army determined to wrest their country back from a corrupt government and the American plunderers who dance under the stars, assassinating one another in the dark of night.

Like moths to flame, enthusiastic celebrities gather to partake of Cuba's notorious nightlife, racetrack and gambling venues, George Raft, Errol Flynn, Eartha Kitt, Ava Gardner and mob sycophant Frank Sinatra. Even John F Kennedy enjoys a Havana romp, thanks to the generosity of the mob. Dressed to kill, the quasi-nobles of graft live out their dream, at least for a few lucrative years, the usual competition breeding discontent in an organization ruled by ambition and violence. English builds his case, a corrupt economy ultimately brought down by guerilla fervor, the glitter and beauty vanquished by rampaging crowds, crime bosses left bleeding in the streets, others scattering to rise another day in other locations, indestructible as roaches. Newly purified, Cuba incorporates remnants of the past, classic cars, a few still elegant hotels and a people's government that delivers a different kind of repression. The truth more fascinating than any movie's fictionalized account, the island comes to life in Havana Nocturne, if only for a while. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Enjoyable, informative -- but I found the writing pretty poor.
Enjoyed the book, learned from it, buzzed through it pretty quickly. But I found some of the writing pretty poor:

"He was like a Cheshire cat, his countenance without emotion" -- Though Lewis Carroll's cat didn't give away much, its predominant feature is a gigantic grin.

"there is no known photo of Lansky and Batista together, or any documents signed jointly by them. Their partnership seems to have existed on a near mystical plane, with each man knowing intuitively what the other required to manipulate the levers of power and create opportunities for personal remuneration." But they are known to have spoken to each other, which makes the relationship a touch less mystical.


"Lansky, age forty-four, was trim and tanned, as usual. His 5-foot-4-inch stature had earned him the nickname 'little man.' It was meant ironically: in his chosen profession as an underworld entrepreneur who specialized in gambling, Lansky was anything but little." but that's not really irony...

"commonly known as gangsterismo (gangsterism)." -- yes, I could have figured that out myself.

"When Batista heard this news, Smith detected a slight irregularity in his breathing, as if the Cuban dictator had been kicked in the testicles." What?

I felt that I came across poor similes, awkward phrasing, overblown description, odd/unnecessary translation etc. every couple few pages. Still enjoyed the book, but wish that it had been worked on a little more.

Enjoyable but needs perspective
This is an enjoyable and eye-opening book about the mob's presence in Havana's tourism and gambling operations that ended with the revolution. English has clearly done his homework on the mob and he has captured the characters and personalities of the mobsters; but at the same time the mob has captured English. He clearly has, to some degree, become enamored with their escapades and seems less skeptical than he should be about some of the stories they tell (for example, he expresses no doubts when some old mobsters infer that they assassinated JFK). As a result, he vastly overstates the importance of the mob in relationship to the Batista regime and downplays the importance of the other industrial enterprises in Cuba (for example, he doesn't make the obvious connection that the reason the revolution targeted sugar and petroleum rather than the casinos was that the former were far more important than the latter). But these are relatively small criticisms; the book is interesting throughout and brings to life a chapter in history that is now only remembered through the lens of Godfather II.