>THE SAVAGE CITY is available in bookstores and through online booksellers March 2011. See reviews below...
"Better than Havana Nocturne… I do believe that this book could be titled Things Actually Do Get Better Sometimes … It’s an absolute great piece of work."
—Jon Stewart
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
"T.J. English, who chronicled Irish gangsters in The Westies, Vietnamese gangs in Chinatown in Born to Kill, and the Mafia’s pre-Castro Cuba, returns with a swashbuckling, racially charged nightmare about New York City in the 1960s. This is one nightmare worth reliving because Mr. English so vividly recreates an era…"
— The New York Times
"It’s dripping with the kind of detail that’s too good to make up."
— Mother Jones
"Breathtaking history… The Savage City reads like a Ross McDonald crime thriller about how the sins of the past always come back to bite you."
— Denis Hamill
The New Daily News
"Epic new history… The sprawling structure of the book is reminiscent of J. Anthony Lukas’s classic Common Ground, which told the story of the integration of public schools through the eyes of three Boston area families… English has found iconic characters for a particular time and place – New York in the 1960s and 1970s."
— The Village Voice
"T.J. English’s majesterial history of New York City in the 1960s and 70s deals with race and corruption within the New York Police Department and the so-called justice system."
— Leonard Levitt,
author of NYPD Confidential
"The Savage City is spellbinding and suspenseful… The author masterfully recreates [an] urban underworld… [His] sympathy for his subjects and his decision to let them speak for themselves gives the narrative immediacy and power."
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“An epic look at the racial animus, fear, and hatred that characterized [a] troubled decade. Drawing on interviews with former police and prosecutors, activists, hustlers,
and journalists, English recounts a time of growing and visceral hostility between a police department steeped in corruption and a besieged black community that exploded in violence. . . . Through the lives of three ostensibly unrelated men, English peels back the underlying turmoil that led to the violent period and the unaddressed social
ills that remain to this day.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“The Savage City is a necessary examination of the people, passions, and maligned
principles by which New York City once lived and died. English has a magnificent sense of the manner in which people, landscape, and history are bound together. Every world is a corner and every corner is a world.”
—Colum McCann,
author of Let the Great World Spin
“T.J. English has mastered the hybrid narrative art form of social history and underworld thriller. The Savage City is a truly gripping read filled with unexpected twists and turns. Highly recommended.”
—Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior and The Great Deluge.
“Forget Vietnam— New York City in the 1960s and 1970s hosted its own civil war between a racist police force and a newly militant black underclass, according to this bare-knuckled true-crime saga. . . English paints a vivid, gritty panorama of a city wracked by racial insurgency, showing us precinct house backrooms where black suspects are beaten and white perps let off with a bribe; seething ghettos ready to riot at the next police shooting; and mean streets where the cops themselves face machine-gun fire. . . . A gripping, noirish retrospective of an era when brutal misrule sparked desperate rage.”
With the publication of THE SAVAGE CITY, writer T.J. ENGLISH has stepped up his game. Long known for his thorough and insightful books on differing aspects of organized crime and the criminal underworld, THE SAVAGE CITY sprawls across a larger social canvas. Issues of race, class and criminal justice are the backdrop for a riveting story of three lives caught in the racial turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s. As New York City comes apart at the seams, readers will be shocked and engrossed by English's ability to illuminate historical details and interpersonal emotions from an era that still has an impact on the way we live today. Readers expect nothing less from T.J. English. Starting with his debut book, THE WESTIES, and subsequent best sellers BORN TO KILL, PADDY WHACKED and HAVANA NOCTURNE, and through his journalism, English's work has captivated readers and charted new territory, leading historian and author Luc Sante (LOW LIFE) to declare T.J. English "one of the great reporters of our time."
T.J. English on The Daily Show
In the modern world of book promotion, publishers hope to land their writers a spot on national television. But the venues for authors on TV are dwindling. Oprah? One-in-a-million shot. Charlie Rose? Yeah, but who watches PBS. One of the early morning shows? Sure, but they give authors less than five minutes of air time. The gold standard is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. T.J. English has now appeared twice on Stewart's show, most recently in March 2011 to talk about THE SAVAGE CITY.
A young filmmaker named Brandon Cotter has been following around T.J. ENGLISH as he promotes his latest New York Times Bestseller, THE SAVAGE CITY. Recently, the author appeared with former Black Panther DHORUBA BIN WAHAD, a central figure in the book. English and Bin Wahad were on a panel with legendary Harlem journalist HERB BOYD, who acted as moderator for a lively presentation. Cotter's film, entitled SAVAGE REALITIES, is here presented as a documentary series in three 15-minute installments, best viewed in sequence, starting with Part 1...
Savage Realities Part 2 by Brandon Cotter
The Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem, NYC was the setting for a panel presentation by author T.J. English; author, educator and journalist Herb Boyd; and activist and former Black Panther Dhoruba Bin Wahad. The occasion was the release of THE SAVAGE CITY, a new book by T.J. English. An audience of Harlem residents turned out for the event, in which the three participants discuss the historical and contemporary relevance of the book.
Savage Realities Part 3 by Brandon Cotter
With this mini-doc created exclusively for the web, Brandon Cotter has sought to portray the subject matter in THE SAVAGE CITY through images and music. Both the historical and the contemporary importance of issues such as race and criminal justice are laid out by T.J. English, Herb Boyd and Dhoruba Bin Wahad. The events in T.J. English’s book took place decades ago, but the repercussions still resonate today. The Struggle continues...
Best Books of the Month: March 2011 by Amazon.com
The Savage City
March 1, 2011
One part police procedural, one part historical narrative, T.J. English's The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge follows three different men caught in the fallout of New York City's most turbulent decade as race relations, corruption, and crime reached a stormy head. English traces the events that shook the city to its core during the '60s and early '70s, from the assassination of Malcolm X and the rise and fall of the Black Panthers, to the trial that exposed the multiple layers of corruption plaguing the city's police department. Woven throughout this narrative is the troubling story of George Whitmore, a young black man who was bullied into confessing to several of the city's gristliest murders--and who spent the next ten years attempting to prove his innocence and earn back his freedom. The Savage City is an expansive, remarkably detailed account of one of the most tumultuous moments in America's history, and of the lingering effects of the decade's injustices. --Lynette Mong
Amazon.com's entire list of Best Books for March 2011:Click here
