Bøger af Burton Hersh

The history of one of the most admired (Bobby Kennedy) and one of the most reviled (J. Edgar Hoover) are entwined with that of Joseph Kennedy

Wet Work picks up where Hedge Fund left off on the exploits of the Landau family Michael, the narrator and lawyer son, is excited by his chance to plead a momentous case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Immediately afterwards he finds himself lured into a fishing expedition in Costa Rica by his astute Comanche brother-in-law, Sonny (Buffalo Hump) a lieutenant colonel and a seasoned scout with U.S.Army Intelligence. Once in San Jose, Sonny enlists Michael to strike up an acquaintanceship with Staniford Murtha, an unscrupulous CIA dropout our government suspects of fomenting a revolution against the progressive government in Costa Rica so that U.S. mining interests can grab off and exploit gold and diamond-mining properties. Suddenly, issues revolving around climate change and the environment weigh heavy for Michael, Sonny, and the natives of San Jose. Murtha and his backers are relentless in their ambitions; To get clearance to grab the Central American mines they are plotting to tip the U.S. Supreme Court by taking out a faltering old liberal, Grover -- "Lefty" -- Stynhenge by corrupting his hefty, self-serving latest wife so that the Court's conservative majority can clear the way. Michael and Sonny barely arrive in time to intervene and provoke the thrilling finale. So you think you've got climate change worries?

Since 1959 Fidel Castro's Cuba has struggled along ninety miles off the coast of Florida, treated alternately as a threat and an economic basket case by the American Colossus. Several generations of immigrants, mostly from Havana, have all but taken over Miami and found their way quickly into political and financial power. The Hedge Fund deals imaginatively with how all this plays out when the boisterous daughter of a wealthy, established St. Petersburg family, the Landaus, marries the son of a ruthless, upward-striving Cuban financier whose overnight rise depends on his connection to the Trafficante wing of the surviving Cosa Nostra. The patriarch of the St. Petersburg contingent, Sylvan Landau, is a witty, mordant Jewish savant in his mid-sixties. Through investments in up-market real estate Sylvan has accumulated a fortune; when his new son-in-law's father, Ramon Perez y Cruz, presents Sylvan with the chance to mortgage his best properties into a hedge fund Ramon controls and cash in on beach properties in Cuba when the regime relents, Sylvan cannot resist. Sylvan's son Michael, the narrator of the novel, a lawyer in his early thirties who has grown up in his father's shadow, remains dubious from the start. Before long Michael has recruited the rangy brother of his Comanche lover Linda, Sonny. A seasoned military scout, Sonny directs a night raid on Ramon's offices to recover crucial paperwork, Ramon responds; Sonny and Sylvan find themselves under attack by machine gun halfway into a boat ride through the Everglades. Why is soon plain enough. Ransacking Ramon's documents, Michael discovers that Ramon has been collecting huge payoffs smuggling assets out of Cuba for members of the collapsing Castro regime. Word leaks; before long both the Castroite hard-liners and the Trafficante backers of Ramon are gunning for both families. Everything culminates in the landmark National Hotel in Havana, where the powerful denouement plays itself through.

Early in Comanche Country Michael Landau's military-intelligence brother-in-law, the astute Lt. Colonel Sonny (Buffalo Hump), recruits Michael to take a look at the Comanche reservation in Lawton, Oklahoma. Years of drought have reduced the tribe; just then the elders are anguished because a major oil driller is about to frack beneath the Wichita Mountains, the burial ground of the tribe for centuries. Children are already starting to die from the attendant pollution while corrupt natives continue to sell drilling rights to the invading corporations. Perhaps Michael, his brother-in-law urges, can find some legal recourse that might permit the dwindling tribe to reverse the deepening poverty and widespread corporate exploitation. The Tea-Party administration in Oklahoma is apparently urging the drillers on. To deepen the local corruption, major casino operators are moving in, exploiting the Native-American franchise on gambling on the reservations. Visiting, Michael's son Ten Bears (Sylvan Landau II) happens to witness the assassination of a whistleblower. By then all the Landaus are tangled into the chaos of Lawton as an earthquake triggered by the incessant fracking tumbles tribal graves and ignites a revolution.