The Opperman Report'

Blue Mafia tells the backstory behind two federal investigations of police brutality in Steubenville and Warren, Ohio, from the perspective of the victims, cops, attorneys, and officials who participated. The story is essentially the biography of a small-town civil rights lawyer, but it is also a hard-boiled detective novel set in an era of rank corruption, smear campaigns, false imprisonments, death threats, and assassination attempts, no longer carried out by the mob, but instead by and for the police.


The book explores the controversial police brutality lawsuits leading up to the historic police reform agreements and their outcomes, using the career of a local civil rights lawyer who fought a 20-year battle against two brutal, corrupt police departments and acted as an informant to federal investigators. It is like an instruction manual for aspiring activists and civil rights defenders who want to oust a despotic police chief or prosecutor, as well as an idiot’s guide for law enforcement and public officials on the pitfalls of power.


In Steubenville, when attorney Richard Olivito defends a drug dealer claiming police misconduct, he begins to feel hunted. Later, he acts as an informant and collaborator to Justice Department officials investigating the Steubenville police, which results in a consent decree, or court-enforced reform agreement, the 2nd in U.S. history. A few years later, Olivito incites another federal Investigation in neighboring Warren, where residents have complained of police brutality for decades. This time is different because there is a video.


Blue Mafia shows that some small towns have at least equally severe problems with police brutality and misconduct as many big cities, and it chronicles federal reform efforts on local police agencies during five U.S. presidential administrations, providing the most detailed account to date of police reform by consent decree and revealing the messy, sometimes tragic yet always human aspects of policing.

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The True Story of the Prison Escape That Inspired the Documentary “How It Really Happened”

In June 2015, two convicted murderers broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in New York’s North Country—launching the most extensive manhunt in state history and dominating the news cycle with the sex scandal linking both inmates to the prison employee who aided them.

Double murderer Richard Matt and cop-killer David Sweat slipped out of their cells, followed a network of tunnels and pipes under the thirty-foot prison wall, and climbed out of a manhole to freedom. For three weeks, residents of local communities were prisoners in their own homes as law enforcement swept the wilderness near the Canadian border.

Dannemora is a gripping account of the bold breakout and the search that ended with one man dead, one man back in custody—and lingering questions about those who set the deadly drama in motion.

“A dramatic story. . . . A true community insider’s perspective on a legendary manhunt.”
—Booklist

“A gripping account of the daring prison break. . . . True crime fans will be more than satisfied.”
—Publishers Weekly

“More than just a page-turner—a true story about people who are dedicated to seeking justice.”
—Robert K. Tanenbaum

“An exciting read, full of shocking revelations. . . . Don’t miss this stunning true story.”
—Gregg Olsen

“Eye-opening, provocative . . . a true story, full of shocking twists and turns.”
—M. William Phelps

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Why is What’s My Line? TV star and Pulitzer-Prize-nominated investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen one of the most feared journalists in history? Why has her threatened exposure of the truth about the JFK assassination triggered a cover-up by at least four government agencies and resulted in abuse of power at the highest levels?

Denial of Justice—written in the spirit of bestselling author Mark Shaw’s gripping true crime murder mystery, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much—tells the inside story of why Kilgallen was such a threat leading up to her unsolved murder in 1965. Shaw includes facts that have never before been published, including eyewitness accounts of the underbelly of Kilgallen’s private life, revealing statements by family members convinced she was murdered, and shocking new information about Jack Ruby’s part in the JFK assassination that only Kilgallen knew about, causing her to be marked for danger.

Peppered with additional evidence signaling the potential motives of Kilgallen’s arch enemies J. Edgar Hoover, mobster Carlos Marcello, Frank Sinatra, her husband Richard, and her last lover, Denial of Justice adds the final chapter to the story behind why the famous journalist was killed, with no investigation to follow despite a staged death scene. More information can be found at www.thedorothykilgallenstory.com.

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"I hope everyone reads this book. It has become such a crucial thing for all of us to understand." —Erin Burnett, CNN

"An ideal tour guide for your journey into the depths of the rabbit hole that is QAnon. It even shows you a glimmer of light at the exit." —Cullen Hoback, director of HBO's Q: Into the Storm

Its messaging can seem cryptic, even nonsensical, yet for tens of thousands of people, it explains everything: What is QAnon, where did it come from, and is the Capitol insurgency a sign of where it’s going next?

On October 5th, 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark in the State Dining Room at a gathering of military officials. He said it felt like “the calm before the storm”—then refused to elaborate as puzzled journalists asked him to explain. But on the infamous message boards of 4chan, a mysterious poster going by “Q Clearance Patriot,” who claimed to be in “military intelligence,” began the elaboration on their own.

In the days that followed, Q’s wild yarn explaining Trump's remarks began to rival the sinister intricacies of a Tom Clancy novel, while satisfying the deepest desires of MAGA-America. But did any of what Q predicted come to pass? No. Did that stop people from clinging to every word they were reading, expanding its mythology, and promoting it wider and wider? No.

Why not? Who were these rapt listeners? How do they reconcile their worldview with the America they see around them? Why do their numbers keep growing? Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in conspiracy theories, has been collecting their stories for years, and through interviews with QAnon converts, apostates, and victims, as well as psychologists, sociologists, and academics, he is uniquely equipped to explain the movement and its followers.

In The Storm Is Upon Us, he takes readers from the background conspiracies and cults that fed the Q phenomenon, to its embrace by right-wing media and Donald Trump, through the rending of families as loved ones became addicted to Q’s increasingly violent rhetoric, to the storming of the Capitol, and on.

And as the phenomenon shows no sign of calming despite Trump’s loss of the presidency—with everyone from Baby Boomers to Millennial moms proving susceptible to its messaging—and politicians starting to openly espouse its ideology, Rothschild makes a compelling case that mocking the seeming madness of QAnon will get us nowhere. Rather, his impassioned reportage makes clear it's time to figure out what QAnon really is — because QAnon and its relentlessly dark theory of everything isn’t done yet.

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A charismatic leader founds a commune in Los Angeles in the early '70s based on natural food, spiritual practices and psychedelic rock. This short-lived era is recreated with archival material and the memories of participants.

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