Pete Earley

A dual memoir and journalistic investigation into the criminalization of America's mentally ill describes the author's battle with the shortcomings of the nation's mental health system after his son was declared ill, and exposes what the author learned throughout his year-long investigation into the Miami-Dade County jail. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

An inside look at the controversial law enforcement program designed to provide new identities for federal witnesses traces the history of WITSEC from its origins in the 1960s to the present day, describes its role in fighting organized crime, and profiles some of the colorful individuals who have taken part in it. Reprint.

In this lively and probing book, award-winning author Pete Earley traces the extraordinary evolution of Las Vegas -- from the gaudy Mecca of the Rat Pack era to one of the country's top family vacation spots. He revisits the city's checkered history of moguls, mobsters, and entertainers, reveals the real stories of well-known power brokers like Steve Wynn and legends like Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel, and offers a fascinating portrait of the life, death, and fantastic rebirth of the Las Vegas Strip. Earley also documents the gripping tale of the entrepreneurs behind the rise and fall and rise again of one of the largest gaming corporations in the nation, Circus Circus -- to which he was given unique access. In his trademark you-are-there style, he takes us behind the scenes to meet the blackjack dealers and hookers, the heavy hitters and bit players, the security officers, cabbies, and showgirls who are caught up in the mercurial pace that pulses at the heart of this astounding city.

Pete Earley's The Hot House gave America a riveting, uncompromising look at the nation's most notorious prison--the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas--a book that Kirkus Reviews called a "fascinating white-knuckle tour of hell, brilliantly reported." Now Earley shows us a different, even more intimate view of justice--and injustice--American-style. In Monroeville, Alabama, in the fall of 1986, a pretty junior college student was found murdered in the back of the dry cleaning shop where she worked. Several months later, Walter "Johnny D." McMillian, a black man with no criminal record, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the crime. As McMillian sat in his cell on Alabama's death row, a young black lawyer named Bryan Stevenson took up his own investigation into the murder of Ronda Morrison. Finding a trial tainted by procedural mistakes, conflicting eyewitness accounts, and outright perjury, he was determined to see McMillian go free--even if it took the most unconventional means...