Independent history writing about the parts of the American record that get skipped. Every claim here is sourced — check the citations and argue with them.
Organized Crime
Murder Inc. executed an estimated 500 contract killings for the national crime syndicate. Meyer Lansky built the financial architecture that laundered their revenue through Las Vegas the Bahamas and Swiss banks.
Organized Crime
The Westies controlled Hell's Kitchen through dismemberment and fear. Winter Hill ran Boston for three decades under FBI protection. Irish-American organized crime dominated its territories without the national structure the Italian families had.
Organized Crime
The Chicago Outfit Philadelphia mob Detroit Partnership Kansas City mob and Winter Hill Gang operated for decades as nodes in a national criminal network. This series covers organized crime as a national system.
Organized Crime
The Kansas City mob controlled the Tropicana counting room and skimmed casino revenue for Chicago Cleveland and Milwaukee — until FBI surveillance ended the mob's entire Las Vegas era in the 1980s.
Organized Crime
The Detroit mob called itself the Partnership — a deliberate joint venture between Italian and Jewish-American crime families that ran Detroit's criminal economy for fifty years without attracting national attention.
Organized Crime
Nicky Scarfo ran the Philadelphia mob in the 1980s and ordered more murders per year than any comparable crime family — violence that ultimately generated the cooperating witnesses who destroyed the organization.
Organized Crime
Whitey Bulger ran Boston's Winter Hill Gang while serving as an FBI informant — and used classified informant identities to have rivals murdered. The FBI paid $100 million to settle wrongful death suits.
Organized Crime
The Chicago Outfit outlasted Al Capone by sixty years — running Las Vegas skim operations and Teamsters pension fund schemes from Tony Accardo's era through the 1990s RICO prosecutions.
War Crimes & Military Atrocities
From My Lai to Hiroshima: a full accounting of American war crimes and contested military decisions — the documented pattern of what happens and who is held responsible.
War Crimes & Military Atrocities
Five cases where the harm is documented but the moral verdict isn't settled: internment firebombing atomic bombs POW camps and drone warfare.
War Crimes & Military Atrocities
The U.S. has killed American citizens by drone without trial including a 16-year-old boy. The legal memos authorizing it remain partially classified. No charges filed.
War Crimes & Military Atrocities
The U.S. held 425000 Axis prisoners in 700 camps during WWII — treating them better than Black American soldiers who guarded them. The racial contradiction was built-in.