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T. J. English (born October 6, 1957) is an American author and journalist known primarily for his non-fiction books about organized crime — both contemporary and historical — criminal justice, jazz, and the American underworld.[1]
T. J. English was born in Tacoma, Washington and grew up in an Irish Catholic family of ten children.[1] His father was a steelworker and his mother a social worker for Catholic Charities. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1980, English worked as a high school teacher in East Los Angeles.[citation needed]
In 1981, he moved to New York City to pursue a career as a writer, working in a series of odd jobs including bartender, janitor, and most notably, taxi driver for three years, while working as a freelance journalist. Of driving a taxi English has said, "I think of it as a metaphor for what I do as a writer."[citation needed]
His first book, The Westies: Inside The Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob (1990), is a best-selling account of an Irish American gang in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. The Westies operated primarily in the 1970s and 1980s, though the roots of the gang go all the way back to the Prohibition Era.[2]
In 1995, English published Born to Kill, about a Vietnamese gang based in New York City's Chinatown.[3] The book was nominated for an Edgar Award in the category of Best Fact Crime.[citation needed]
Paddy Whacked, published in 2005, is a sweeping history of the Irish American gangster from the time of the Irish famine to the present day.[4] The book was the author’s first New York Times bestseller. Paddy Whacked was adapted as a two-hour documentary first broadcast on the History Channel in 2006.[citation needed]
Havana Nocturne (published in the U.K. as The Havana Mob), presents the story of U.S. mobster infiltration of Cuba in the 1950s.[5] Published in 2008, the book rose to No. 7 on the New York Times best seller list and was also nominated for an Edgar Award.[citation needed]
With The Savage City (2011), English turned his attention to racial tension in New York City in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the framing of a young black male for a horrific double murder he did not commit touched off an era of hostility between the NYPD and the emerging Black Liberation Movement.[6] The book was also a New York Times best seller and nominated for an Edgar Award.[citation needed]
“Where the Bodies Were Buried: Whitey Bulger and the World that Made Him” (2015) was the author’s fourth book to receive an Edgar nomination and also his fourth New York Times bestseller.
In March 2018, English published The Corporation: An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld. This book focused mainly on the organized crime wars of the mid-'80s. Centered around Jose Battle AKA "El Gordo" and his Bolita (Cuban lottery, "little ball") empire, the book delves into the horrific violence surrounding the Bolita racket between the Cubans and the Italian/Sicilian mob.
In 2023, English received a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld (William Morrow, 2022). The PEN award is to “promote works of excellence by writers of all cultures and racial background and to educate the public and the media as to the nature of multi-cultural work.” “Dangerous Rhythms” stemmed from the author’s lifelong fascination with the culture, history and music of Jazz. In 2018, he began his own jazz recording label called Dangerous Rhythms, and from that year until 2020 English hosted a Latin Jazz concert series at Birdland Theater nightclub in Manhattan, which showcased notable jazz musicians such as David Virelles, Bobby Sanabria, Roman Diáz, Sammy Figueroa, Zaccai and Luques Curtis, and many others.
In the 1980s, while driving a taxi at night, English wrote for Irish America magazine, which led to his first book, The Westies. Later, he wrote a series of articles for Playboy entitled "The New Mob", which explored the new face of organized crime. He went on to write major feature articles for Esquire, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, the now-defunct Brooklyn Bridge Magazine, and other publications.[citation needed]
In 2010, English wrote "Dope", an article for Playboy, about a DEA agent in Cleveland who was indicted for framing innocent African Americans on bogus narcotics charges. The article was cited by the New York Press Club for Best Crime Reporting. With "Narco Americano", published in Playboy in 2011, English examined the narco war in Mexico after spending time in the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso border area.
The author’s crime journalism was collected in the book “Whitey’s Payback: And Other True Stories of Gangsterism, Murder, Corruption, and Revenge” (2013), published by Mysterious Press/Open Road Media.
With his three published volumes on differing aspects of Irish American involvement in the underworld (“Paddy Whacked,” The Westies” and “Where the Bodies Were Buried”), English covers more ground than any previous writer or historian on this subject. From the time of the Irish Potato Famine, through the Prohibition era, the post World War II years, and up to recent times with contemporary crime groups such as the Westies (New York City) and Whitey Bulger’s gangster reign in Boston, English explores the full historical sweep of the story.
“The Last Kilo: Willy Falcon and the Cocaine Empire that Seduced America” (2024) completes the author’s trilogy of non-fiction books covering history from the time of the American Mob’s economic exploitation of Havana in the 1940s and 1950, to the formation of the Corporation in Union City, New Jersey, New York City and Miami in the 1970s and 1980s, to the cocaine era of the 1970s and 1980 that changed America. These books show how the Cuban Revolution, which brought Fidel Castro into power in Cuba in 1959, had a major impact on American society — and the criminal underworld — over the following half a century.
Also a screenwriter, English has written episodes of the television crime dramas NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Streets. He shared a Humanitas Prize with David Simon and Julie Martin for the episode "Shades of Gray".
In 2019, Lehman College, City University of New York, located in the Bronx, presented T.J. English with the Global Impact Award for “outstanding commitment to global community through advocacy and writing.” Two years later, the same university bestowed upon the author an Honorary Doctorate Degree of Letters.
