Jerome Tuccille

“Who Murdered the Vets?” writer Ernest Hemingway demanded in an impassioned article about the deaths of hundreds of former soldiers. Their fate came as part of the larger and often overlooked story of veterans of the Great War and their deplorable treatment by the government they once served.

Three years earlier, under orders from President Herbert Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur led the U.S. military through the streets of the nation’s capital against an encampment of veterans and their families. The vets were suffering the ravages of the Great Depression and seeking an early payment of promised war bonuses. Tanks, troops, and cavalry burned down tents and leveled campsites in a savage and lethal effort to disperse the protesters, resulting in the murder of several demonstrators.

The administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt subsequently shipped the vets to distant work camps in the Florida Keys, where they were housed in flimsy tent cities that fell prey to a hurricane of which the authorities had been given ample warning. It was in reaction to the hundreds of bodies left in the storm’s wake that Hemingway penned his provocative words.

The War Against the Vets is the first book about the Bonus Army to describe in detail the political battles that threatened to tear the country apart, as well as the scandalous treatment of the World War I vets.

Many have heard how Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. But often forgotten in the great swamp of history is that Roosevelt’s success was ensured by a dedicated corps of black soldiers—the so-called Buffalo Soldiers—who fought by Roosevelt’s side during his legendary campaign. This book tells their story. They fought heroically and courageously, making Roosevelt’s campaign a great success that added to the future president’s legend as a great man of words and action. But most of all, they demonstrated their own military prowess, often in the face of incredible discrimination from their fellow soldiers and commanders, to secure their own place in American history.

Our hero is frozen when he dies and is thawed out sometime in the future. He emerges into a strange new world of ocean communities, underwater cities, and lunar developments built by Walt Disney, Donald Trump, and others who have also been frozen and reanimated. At first he is horrified, but soon he comes to like this brave new world where most of the population has moved from the land into the oceans and beyond into outer space. He can now afford to live where he always wanted to live in his past life, on Riverside Drive in Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River. Despite all the fun and games, the story has a strong bite to it, a satirical view of the world we live in. The book is funny and serious at the same time, an insightful commentary on the commercialism that surrounds us today--and probably well into the future.

King of Media dramatizes for the first time the extraordinary story of the visionary yet tenacious man who revolutionized the entertainment industry. After starting out in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency in the 1960s, Diller joined ABC Television where his swift rise through the ranks earned him almost immediate recognition and chairmanship of Paramount Pictures. There he oversaw such film classics as "Saturday Night Fever," "Grease," and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," as well as the TV shows "Laverne & Shirley" and "Taxi."

However, Diller made his most indelible mark on the industry when in 1987 he formed FOX TV, which went head to head with the existing networks by programming innovative series such as The Simpsons, Married…With Children, and In Living Color. Since then Diller has continued to grab headlines, most notably with his acquisition of QVC, his volatile and failed battle to buy Paramount Pictures, and later his marriage to fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg. Among the dozens of celebrities and media tycoons we meet along the way are Calvin Klein, Andy Warhol, John Travolta, Warren Beatty, David Geffen, Rupert Murdoch, Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Ted Turner, Robert Evans, and Joan Rivers.

Hemingway and Gellhorn is scheduled to be an HBO special starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman and produced by James Gandolfini. Jerome Tuccille’s new book about the couple explores Hemingway’s tumultuous marriage to his third wife set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in Key West, the first revolution in Cuba, the Spanish civil war, World War II, and the war in China. It is as much about their activities as intelligence agents and the great political and economic events of the period as it is about the two protagonists. This is the first book that goes into detail about Hemingway’s role as a spy for the U.S. government. This is the first book that discusses how Martha’s political passions played such an important role in the breakup of their marriage. This is the first book that talks about Hemingway’s many extramarital affairs and his need to always have another woman in his life. This is the first book that examines Gellhorn’s affairs before and during their marriage and her true motivation for seducing Hemingway. Previous books have portrayed the protagonists in their roles as major literary figures. No other books on Hemingway and Gellhorn have dramatized them as political activists within the context of their era. Hemingway and Gellhorn depicts them as their lives evolved during the major political, military, and economic events of the time—the Great Depression, revolution, war in China and in Europe. Both writers were extremely political and committed in different ways to their political ideals. They were also highly promiscuous. This is the first book to show them in that light.

This book was first published in 2009 and is the recipient of several awards. The Gallos rose from abject poverty in the early 1900s to create the most successful wine company in the world, the Gallo family used hard work, strong values—and crime—to find their success. In Gallo Be Thy Name, biographer Jerome Tuccille takes readers through Prohibition and the Great Depression, following the Gallos as they ride the turbulent currents of history to triumph. But beneath the shiny steel surface of the Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery swirl rumors of murder and a sweeping story of passion and power. A new edition will be published by Blue Mustang Press in 2010.

“Tuccille is a master chronicler of events. He also brings in a kaleidoscope of American History during the earlier decades of this century that both delights and engrosses the reader.”

The story told in this book is based on events that took place more than thirty years ago. The theft of eight priceless paintings took place as told; they were hidden in my father’s cellar in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx for about two years until my wife and I removed them. My cousin and his partner were arrested for their roles in the crime. I have taken some fictional liberties in the reconstruction of dialogue that occurred back in the 1970s and in the invention of details that most likely happened during breaks in the main action of the story.

After returning from a vacation in California with his wife and family, the narrator is reluctantly drawn into a crime involving the theft of eight Impressionist masterpieces from a Manhattan art gallery, perpetrated by members of his family, and escapes at the end only by the grace of a benevolent deity. In June 2007, one of the paintings, Monet’s “Nympheas,” sold at auction in London for $36 million. The narrator tries to find redemption in a quixotic political campaign when he runs for Governor of New York, only to have his life unravel before his eyes in a way he could not have foreseen. The failure of his campaign and the arrest of members of his family for their involvement in the crime lead to near financial ruin and the destruction of his marriage. In the end, he gets back on his feet, reunites with his wife, and finds his way back onto a path toward redemption. An updated edition was published by Whiskey Creek Press in December 2010.

This edition of It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand contains much of the text that appeared in the original edition—revised and edited to conform to modern style—plus new chapters dealing with events that took place after the book was first published. Some of the new material deals with my campaign for Governor of New York as the Free Libertarian Party candidate, a discussion of events that transpired on the American political scene after that benighted campaign, plus thoughts on my current political and spiritual leanings. The perennial success of It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand has startled no one more than me. Sales started slowly, then began to pick up over the years, until the book became an underground classic that has gained readership over the decades. It should be read as political memoir, a first-hand account of a political movement, mostly fact, but with fictional elements and hyperbole added for effect. A reviewer once said that most memoirs are neither fact nor fiction; they are the truth as the author remembers it. So it is with It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand.