Playboy: Narco Americano

An extensive new investigative article by T.J. ENGLISH entitled "Narco Americano" appears in the newly published February 2011 issue of Playboy magazine. The article offers a disturbing assessment of the narco war in Mexico, focusing on the border region of Ciudad Juarez, near El Paso, Texas. Using the shocking double-homicide of a U.S. consulate employee and her husband last March as the central narrative of the article, English ranges far and wide, shedding light on issues of corruption, economic exploitation and gangsterism that have contributed to the unprecedented crisis in Mexico. The article shows how the U.S. and Mexico are inextricably linked in the so-called drug war, in which nearly 90% of the product coming from Mexico is destined for the U.S. marketplace of drug users and abusers. Thorough and thought-provoking, the article is not to be missed.

REVIEW: The Savage City

KIRKUS REVIEWS

THE SAVAGE CITY
Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge
Author: English, T.J.

Review Date: January 15, 2011
Publisher:
Morrow/HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 15, 2011

Superior chronicle of the most violent decade in New York City history.

Through a crisp journalistic lens, English (Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution, 2008, etc.) retraces the tormented life of three men who proved pivotal in Manhattan’s “now-legendary descent into mayhem” from the early ’60s to the mid ’70s, as the struggling civil-rights movement battled a corrupt, brutal law-enforcement agency. Following the March on Washington in the late summer of 1963, two white Upper East Side women were found bound together, raped and brutally slashed to death. Police scrambled to bring the increasingly sensational double-homicide case to swift closure. George Whitmore, a naïve, 19-year-old, partially blind black laborer, was falsely identified as the perpetrator and coerced into signing a multiple-felony confession by the NYPD, then a primarily white-male “autonomous institution.” Whitmore spent a decade defending himself in the face of a merciless, unyielding justice system. English also provides a deep profile of Bill Phillips, a thieving, prejudiced, corrupt second-generation police officer, as well as of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a fearless ex-convict and Black Panther Party. Culled from a host of wide-ranging interviews, memoirs, court-case transcripts, books, and documentary programming, the author effectively addresses key events like the 1963 Harlem Riots, the shockwaves of Malcolm X’s assassination and the Knapp Commission’s dogged scrutiny of NYPD corruption. Noting that the three centerpiece profiles he features (and the era in which they lived) are “largely forgotten today,” their separate legacies should serve as a cautionary reminder.

A comprehensive, still-shocking exhumation of racial discord in America.

16-page black-and-white photo insert. Agents: Nat Sobel and Judith Weber/Sobel Weber Associates

Fundraiser for the Committee to Protect Journalists

Dec. 8, 2010: THE IRISH-MEXICAN ALLIANCE, a night of music, poetry and speeches all to raise money for the Committee to Protect Journalists, was a fun and fruitful night. Among the participants were author and journalist T.J. ENGLISH, who hosted the event on behalf of Irish American Writers & Artists, Inc.. English was joined by legendary NYC journalist PETE HAMILL and salsa legend and actor RUBEN BLADES.

THE IRISH-MEXICAN ALLIANCE

T.J. English is the host of an upcoming event sponsored by Irish American Writers & Artists, Inc. Check out the details on this poster. A night of Celtic & Mexican music, Chicano & Irish poets, Mexican & Irish beer, all to raise money for the Committee to Protect Journalists, who are seeking to call attention to and provide legal assistance for Mexican journalists who are being killed intimidated and forced to seek asylum in the U.S. for DOING THEIR JOB, i.e. reporting on the Narco War in Mexico.

If you are in the NYC area on Wednesday, December 8, 2010, you do not want to miss this event.

The First Review

The first review of THE SAVAGE CITY, from the December 2010 issue of Booklist magazine:

The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge.
T.J. English (Author)
Mar 2011. 496 p. Morrow, hardcover, $27.99.

In Manhattan in August 1963, two white women were hacked to death in a crime the tabloids would call the Career Girls Murders. The police picked up a near-blind 19-year-old black youth and spent hours pressuring him into confessing to the crime. George Whitmore would spend the next decade fighting the setup as police and prosecutors persisted in what they knew to be a miscarriage of justice. That same decade was the most violent in the history of New York City, with escalating racial tension between the police and black nationalist groups. Acclaimed journalist English profiles Whitmore, as well as Bill Phillips, a brazenly corrupt second-generation NYPD cop, and Dhoruba bin Wahad, a gangbanger turned Black Panther, to present an epic look at the racial animus, fear, and hatred that characterized that 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. He chronicles the rise of the Black Panther Party in New York and the Knapp Commission investigation of police corruption that was later depicted in the movies Serpico and Prince of the City. 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.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The New York Times best-selling author of Havana Nocturne returns with a dramatic true story of race, police corruption, and urban chaos in 1960s New York.
— Vanessa Bush

(THE SAVAGE CITY will be published in March 2011.)

Coming soon!!

THE SAVAGE CITY
Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge

A major new work of social history and true crime by T.J. ENGLISH.



THE SAVAGE CITY will be published in March 2011.

NY Press Club Best Crime Reporting 2010