Boston has had its share of bookies and loan sharks, gangsters and wiseguys, hoodlums and hit men. From the Great Brink's Robbery, which was hailed as the crime of the century; to the long-forgotten Cotton Club in Roxbury, where the legendary nightlife kingpin Charlie "King" Solomon was gunned down; to the infamous Blackfriars Massacre, a brutal gangland slaying that left five men dead, slumped over a backgammon game in a cramped basement office--all of these dark moments in time are a part of Boston's history that is rarely spoken about. Boston Organized Crime explores the region's shadier side and takes a closer look at the mobsters and racketeers who once operated in the Greater Boston area. Drawing upon an eclectic collection of crime scene photographs, mug shots, and police documents, author Emily Sweeney takes readers on an eye-opening journey through Boston's underworld, from the bootlegging days of Prohibition to the bloody gangland wars of the 1960s.

In his new book East Boston Through Time, Anthony Sammarco outlines a neighborhood of the city of Boston which was once known as Noddle's Island, one of five islands that had been used for grazing of livestock since the 1630s. Development of the two larger islands-Noddle's and Breed's Islands-began in the 1830s under the direction of the East Boston Company, making this one of the city of Boston's first neighborhoods to utilize a formal urban plan. East Boston's harbor location also enabled it to become a center for shipbuilding and some of America's most famous clipper ships were built here. As a port with many employment opportunities, the neighborhood grew rapidly during the age of large-scale immigration. East Boston's immigrants literally came in waves--Canadians in the 1840s, the Irish in the 1850s, Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the 1890s, and in the first years of the twentieth century, the neighborhood had what may have been the largest Jewish community in New England, as well as Italian immigrants that would dominate the community in the twentieth century. Today with Columbians, San Salvadorans, and other Latinos, it is a community equally diverse and rich in its new traditions. East Boston is more than just Logan International Airport, one of the earliest municipal airports in the country. It is a thriving and engaging community composed of people from all walks of like, a veritable thriving nexus of cultures, and East Boston proudly continues this long tradition of diversity.

Once a rural paradise known as "Noddle's Island," East Boston is the site of key developments in the nation's history, including the first naval battle of the American Revolution, the creation of the world's fastest sailing ships, the country's first underwater tunnel, and the nation's first public branch library. It has had its share of famous residents, from Colonial governor John Winthrop and repentant Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall, to clipper ship builder Donald McKay and the world's first female clipper ship navigator, Mary Patten. Women's suffrage activist Judith Winsor Smith called East Boston home, as did the first Civil War nurse, Armeda Gibbs; Massachusetts governor John Bates; and Boston mayor Frederick Mansfield. Pres. John F. Kennedy's paternal grandparents and father were born in East Boston, where they started their first businesses and political ventures, and the neighborhood has produced numerous community activists, musicians, artists, writers, and athletes.