Summary of T. J. English's Havana Nocturne

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 In October 1946, Luciano, who had been deported from the United States just seven months earlier, traveled to Cuba. He was there to meet his childhood friend and longtime criminal associate Meyer Lansky.

#2 Luciano and Lansky visited Cuba, where they had lunch at the Grand Hotel. They were there to celebrate Luciano’s early release from prison and his deportation to Sicily. He had been irate that he had been deported to Sicily, as he had no intention of staying in Italy.

#3 Luciano spent two weeks in Havana, meeting with associates and visiting the sites he used to know so well. He was able to relax for the first time in ten years. He had breakfast in bed, and then walked around his estate and supervised the four gardeners as they planted flowers.

#4 Luciano was in Havana waiting for the Mob to arrive for their planned empire in Cuba. He spent his time either cultivating political connections or enjoying the many sensual pleasures Havana had to offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822525443

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Insights on T. J. English's Havana Nocturne

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In October 1946, Luciano, who had been deported from the United States just seven months earlier, traveled to Cuba. He was there to meet his childhood friend and longtime criminal associate Meyer Lansky.

#2

Luciano and Lansky visited Cuba, where they had lunch at the Grand Hotel. They were there to celebrate Luciano’s early release from prison and his deportation to Sicily. He had been irate that he had been deported to Sicily, as he had no intention of staying in Italy.

#3

Luciano spent two weeks in Havana, meeting with associates and visiting the sites he used to know so well. He was able to relax for the first time in ten years. He had breakfast in bed, and then walked around his estate and supervised the four gardeners as they planted flowers.

#4

Luciano was in Havana waiting for the Mob to arrive for their planned empire in Cuba. He spent his time either cultivating political connections or enjoying the many sensual pleasures Havana had to offer.

#5

The arrival of Lucky Luciano and the Mob in Cuba was the next big scheme in their master plan of creating a multinational crime organization. The enticements were clear: in 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, ushering in the era of Prohibition.

#6

The 1920s were a time of great prosperity for Cuba, as the island was a transshipment point for illegal booze shipments. The island’s most famous bar, Sloppy Joe’s, was a popular tourist destination for Americans to get tight on a new drink called the Cuba libre.

#7

The American mobster Meyer Lansky saw the island’s full potential in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and planned to use it to funnel illegal proceeds from criminal activities around the world.

#8

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the American Mafia was formed by a multiethnic group of bootleggers, who served as provocateurs in a bloody Mob war called the Castellammarese War. In 1933, Lansky came to Luciano with an astonishing proposal: to buy into the Cuban government so that the Mob could begin to develop its own gambling infrastructure.

#9

Lansky took over from there, and the cash was gathered and placed in suitcases. He made arrangements to fly to Havana with an associate, Joseph Doc Stacher, a street-savvy, cigar-chomping loyalist who had been a close confidant of Lansky’s since the early days on the Lower East Side.

#10

The Havana operation was now in place, but the timing could not have been worse. By