Word: emperors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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John Gotti thought of himself as the Caesar of the Mafia. But he was really its Commodus. As with the emperor in the movie Gladiator, when Gotti took over the Gambino crime family in 1985, some saw his ascension as a step backward for the family. He was muscle, a grunt, an obscure and none-too-bright soldier who wouldn't have become boss if so many of his betters weren't already in jail...
...wouldn't expect him to write a dense, dark legal thriller either, but Carter is the author of The Emperor of Ocean Park, to be published this week with an astronomical first printing of 500,000 copies. Carter is appallingly modest about it all. "I never dreamed the reception would be anything like what happened," he says. "I assumed it would more or less drop without a ripple...
...relationship between law and religion. So what's he doing slumming with private eyes and crooked cops? "I wanted to write a novel from the time I was very small," Carter confesses. "Most of the major characters came to me almost full blown 20 years ago." He tapped out Emperor late at night, working from 10 to 2 so as not to steal time from his teaching. The law has made him a verbal perfectionist, even in conversation: every other sentence starts with "Let me clarify that by saying...
...even a perfectionist--especially a perfectionist, maybe--has his dark side. The Emperor of Ocean Park begins with a corpse: Oliver Garland, a prominent black judge, is found dead of a heart attack at his desk. At the height of his career Garland was up for the Supreme Court, but his bid was scuttled by rumors of underworld ties, leaving him angry and embittered--he's the Clarence Thomas who might have been. Garland's son Talcott is a moody, middle-aged law professor saddled with a flagging career and a failing marriage. Growing up in the shadow...
DIED. GENICHI KAWAKAMI, 90, entrepreneur dubbed "the emperor," who oversaw the expansion of a tiny Japanese corporation he inherited from his father into Yamaha, world-renowned maker of motorcycles and musical instruments; in Hamamatsu, Japan...