Fast paced legal thriller and powerful urban drama from Frederic Block, the Brooklyn based federal judge who sentenced Peter Gotti of the Gambino crime family. Based partly on fact and seething racial tensions and political corruption, it doesn't get any more "New York" than Race to Judgment! Race to Judgment is a "reality-fiction" debut novel loosely based on a number of high-profile cases handled by its author, a federal trial court judge, over his 23 years on the federal bench in Brooklyn-such as the Crown Heights riots and the Peter Gotti trial. It tracks the rise of the fictional African-American civil rights protagonist Ken Williams (in real life, the recently deceased Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson) from his days as an Assistant United States Attorney through his meteoric rise to unseat the long-term, corrupt Brooklyn DA because of a spate of phony convictions against black defendants, including another one of the judge's real cases (JoJo Jones in the book) for the murder of a Hasidic rabbi. Williams' dramatic courtroom antics (with the aid of his colorful private eye) results in JoJo's exoneration after 16 years behind bars. In addition, Williams defends a young black guidance counselor accused of killing the rabbi's son many years ago, and champions the cause of a young Hasidic woman raped by her father. As a hobby, Williams plays jazz piano and writes country songs written by the author-which are reproduced in the book and can be heard on e-books and the Internet.

An unprecedented plunge into New York City's federal court system that gives us a revelatory picture of how our justice system, and the pursuit of justice, really works. A young Italian Mafioso helps get rid of a body in Queens. In Manhattan, a hedge fund portfolio manager misrepresents his company's assets to investors. At JFK International Airport, a college student returns from Jamaica with cocaine stuffed in the handle of her suitcase. These are just a few of the stories that come to life in this comprehensive look at the Southern District Court in Manhattan, and the Eastern District Court in Brooklyn--the two federal courts tasked with maintaining order in New York City. Johnny Dwyer takes us not just into the courtrooms but into the lives of those who enter through its doors: the judges and attorneys, prosecutors and defendants, winners and losers. He examines crimes we've read about in the papers or seen in movies and on television--organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking, corruption, and white-collar crime--and weaves in the nuances that rarely make it into headlines. Brimming with detail and drama, The Districts illuminates the meaning of intent, of reasonable doubt, of deception, and--perhaps most important of all--of justice.

The book was written for the general public in an effort to explain, in practical terms, the perspective behind some of the most newsworthy and sensatinal cases of the last 20 years. The Judge discusses the death penalty, racketeering, gun laws,drug laws, discrimination laws, race riots, terrorism, and foreign affairs, as well as the more humble aspects of being a man on the bench.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn "A rich chronicle of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly “One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy groups of people in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of the toughest parts of New York City during an era of steep decline, only to later resist and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of the neighborhood. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization and racialization, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.