Book Review: The Deeds of My Fathers

Generoso Papa disembarked at Ellis Island on May 17, 1906. He was 15 years old, didn't speak any English and carried $10 worth of lire. When he found that the one person he knew in New York didn't live at the only address he had, he spent the night on a park bench with his most valuable possession: ambition. By 1929, he was the owner of Colonial Sand & Stone (a powerhouse player in New York's skyscraper-building boom) and local Italian-language newspapers; he also had moved his family into a 22-room apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, across from Central Park.

Although ambition and hard work were part of this immigrant success story, Paul David Pope reveals the cunning, ruthlessness and connections at work in his grandfather's rise. Mob kingpin Frank Costello, Mayor Jimmy Walker and power-brokers from Tammany Hall had important roles in Generoso's march to monopoly power over concrete deliveries in Manhattan. It wasn't pretty, but it was excellent money in everyone's pockets. It also makes a sensational and irresistible story about how business was done in New York City at the time.

At home on Upper Fifth Avenue, it was neither pretty nor excellent. Catherine Pope (Generoso Anglicized his last name when he became a U.S. citizen) was not happy, and she had good reasons. Generoso was seldom home, and she knew it wasn't all work that kept him out late with politicians and showgirls. They fought and glared at each other at every opportunity; until her husband's dying day, her rage was ferocious. Near the end in his hospital room, as he was being attended to, he heard her say, "What's the point? He's dying." With her husband buried, she then double-crossed her youngest son, Gene, to drive him out of the family businesses. She was, after all, the woman who told Gene when he was 13, "You! You are the abortion I should have had."

Gene Pope, Jr., however, could not be stopped. He was single-minded, indomitable, hardworking and smart, his father's son. When he decided to buy a failing newspaper by the name of the New York Enquirer and, penniless, try to start over, he remembered his father's advice to him before he died, "If you have any problems, go see Uncle Frank." Frank Costello came through with the cash for his godson--and what eventually became the National Enquirer, the first of America's tabloids, was launched. Fans of The Sopranos have been waiting (without realizing it) for this multi-generational family saga, equal parts Medea and The Godfather. Don't get in their way unless you want to get hurt. --John McFarland

Shelf Talker: A page-turning, multi-generational family saga featuring immigrant success stories and dysfunctional American family blood-letting.

 

 

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