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The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor Spiral-Bound | July 13, 2004
Mike Stanton
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The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor
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COP: “Buddy, I think this is a whorehouse.”
BUDDY CIANCI: “Now I know why they made you a detective.”
Welcome to Providence, Rhode Island, where corruption is entertainment and Mayor Buddy Cianci presided over the longest-running lounge act in American politics. In The Prince of Providence, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mike Stanton tells a classic story of wiseguys, feds, and politicians on a carousel of crime and redemption.
Buddy Cianci was part urban visionary, part Tony Soprano—a flawed political genius in the mold of Huey Long and James Michael Curley. His lust for power cost him his marriage, his family, and close friendships. Yet he also revitalized the city of Providence, where ethnic factions jostle with old-moneyed New Englanders and black-clad artists from the Rhode Island School of Design rub shoulders with scam artists from City Hall.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Cianci dominated this uneasy melting pot. During his first administration, twenty-two political insiders were convicted of corruption. In 1984, Cianci resigned after pleading guilty to felony assault, for torturing a man he suspected of sleeping with his estranged wife. In 1990, in a remarkable comeback, Cianci was elected mayor once again; he went on to win national acclaim for transforming a dying industrial city into a trendy arts and tourism mecca.
But in 2001, a federal corruption probe dubbed Operation Plunder Dome threatened to bring the curtain down on Cianci once and for all.
Mike Stanton takes readers on a remarkable journey through the underside of city life, into the bizarre world of the mayor and his supporting cast, including:
• “Buckles” Melise, the city official in charge of vermin control, who bought Providence twice as much rat poison as the city of Cleveland, which was at the time four times as large, and wound up increasing Providence’s rat population. During a garbage strike, Buckles sledgehammered one city employee and stuck his thumb in another’s eye. Cianci would later describe this as “great public policy.”
• Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent, a major Rhode Island bookmaker and loan shark, who tried to avoid prison by citing his medical need for forty bowel irrigations a day, thus earning himself the nickname “Public Enema Number One.”
• Dennis Aiken, a celebrated FBI agent and public corruption expert, who asked to be sent to “the Louisiana of the North,” where he enlisted an undercover businessman to expose the corrupt secrets of Cianci’s City Hall.
The Prince of Providence is a colorful and engrossing account of one of the most tragicomic figures in modern American life—and the city he transformed.THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE is Mike Stanton's ribald account of Buddy Cianci, who is part urban visionary, part Tony Soprano--a flawed political genius in the mold of Huey Long and James Michael Curley. His lust for power cost him his marriage, his family and close friendships. Yet he also revitalized the city of Providence, a place where ethnic factions jostle with old-monied Yankees, and black-clad artists from the Rhode Island School of Design rub shoulders with scam-artists from City Hall. Journalist Mike Stanton takes readers on a remarkable journey through the underside of city life, into the bizarre world of the mayor and his pals, a cast of characters so unreal that U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno asked, "Are these guys actors?"
"Mr. Stanton wryly lays out a complicated soap opera of mobsters, FBI agents, the mayor's inner circle, his family, and Buddy. The result is both riveting and repulsive. Buddy was good at campaigning, and after reading Mr. Stanton's account it is just possible to envisage him back in the public eye. The people of Rhode Island's capital are unbelievably forgiving, and Mr. Cianci certainly had personality, if no providence." -- The Economist
"Impressive....there are great yarns.....Try not marveling at the sheer audacity of Cianci's City Hall, whose stewards, as described in The Prince of Providence, ran a criminal enterprise of kickbacks, shakedowns, and threats worthy of The Sopranos. Try not laughing at Tommy Ricci, a contractor who is almost proud of his payoffs: 'All I did was give kickbacks. Is that a crime or what?' Try not shaking your head over characters with nicknames like Buckles, Blackjack, Bobo and Billy Black....It's hard not to shake off an old Billy Joel lyric: 'I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/Sinners are much more fun.' Yes they are, certainly to an outsider who does not have to live with villainy's consequences." -- New York Times Book Review
"Stanton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, provides an astounding, well-researched account of systmatic government impropriety." -- Entertainment Weekly
''A rich, wide-ranging chronicle....The Prince of Providence is one of the best books about contemporary urban politics, on a par with Buzz Bissinger's A Prayer for the City...It lives up to its publisher's hype as a fine read: 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil meets The Sopranos.' '' -- Steve Weinberg, The Boston Globe
"Forget Harry Potter and Hillary Clinton. If you plan to read only one book this summer, it should be Mike Stanton's The Prince of Providence. Stanton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Providence Journal, has written a funny, engaging, and shocking tale about convicted Providence Mayor Vincent A. 'Buddy' Cianci and the "wiseguys" who surrounded him." -- Professor Darrell West, The Providence Journal
"Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Stanton gives us the full Buddy....With his own brand of marinara sauce, a collection of unconvincing toupees and a flair for aggressive self-promotion, Cianci appeared an endearing rogue. And he was endearing enough aht many Providence voters were willing to over look the criminal intent." -- New York Daily News
BUDDY CIANCI: “Now I know why they made you a detective.”
Welcome to Providence, Rhode Island, where corruption is entertainment and Mayor Buddy Cianci presided over the longest-running lounge act in American politics. In The Prince of Providence, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mike Stanton tells a classic story of wiseguys, feds, and politicians on a carousel of crime and redemption.
Buddy Cianci was part urban visionary, part Tony Soprano—a flawed political genius in the mold of Huey Long and James Michael Curley. His lust for power cost him his marriage, his family, and close friendships. Yet he also revitalized the city of Providence, where ethnic factions jostle with old-moneyed New Englanders and black-clad artists from the Rhode Island School of Design rub shoulders with scam artists from City Hall.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Cianci dominated this uneasy melting pot. During his first administration, twenty-two political insiders were convicted of corruption. In 1984, Cianci resigned after pleading guilty to felony assault, for torturing a man he suspected of sleeping with his estranged wife. In 1990, in a remarkable comeback, Cianci was elected mayor once again; he went on to win national acclaim for transforming a dying industrial city into a trendy arts and tourism mecca.
But in 2001, a federal corruption probe dubbed Operation Plunder Dome threatened to bring the curtain down on Cianci once and for all.
Mike Stanton takes readers on a remarkable journey through the underside of city life, into the bizarre world of the mayor and his supporting cast, including:
• “Buckles” Melise, the city official in charge of vermin control, who bought Providence twice as much rat poison as the city of Cleveland, which was at the time four times as large, and wound up increasing Providence’s rat population. During a garbage strike, Buckles sledgehammered one city employee and stuck his thumb in another’s eye. Cianci would later describe this as “great public policy.”
• Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent, a major Rhode Island bookmaker and loan shark, who tried to avoid prison by citing his medical need for forty bowel irrigations a day, thus earning himself the nickname “Public Enema Number One.”
• Dennis Aiken, a celebrated FBI agent and public corruption expert, who asked to be sent to “the Louisiana of the North,” where he enlisted an undercover businessman to expose the corrupt secrets of Cianci’s City Hall.
The Prince of Providence is a colorful and engrossing account of one of the most tragicomic figures in modern American life—and the city he transformed.THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE is Mike Stanton's ribald account of Buddy Cianci, who is part urban visionary, part Tony Soprano--a flawed political genius in the mold of Huey Long and James Michael Curley. His lust for power cost him his marriage, his family and close friendships. Yet he also revitalized the city of Providence, a place where ethnic factions jostle with old-monied Yankees, and black-clad artists from the Rhode Island School of Design rub shoulders with scam-artists from City Hall. Journalist Mike Stanton takes readers on a remarkable journey through the underside of city life, into the bizarre world of the mayor and his pals, a cast of characters so unreal that U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno asked, "Are these guys actors?"
"Mr. Stanton wryly lays out a complicated soap opera of mobsters, FBI agents, the mayor's inner circle, his family, and Buddy. The result is both riveting and repulsive. Buddy was good at campaigning, and after reading Mr. Stanton's account it is just possible to envisage him back in the public eye. The people of Rhode Island's capital are unbelievably forgiving, and Mr. Cianci certainly had personality, if no providence." -- The Economist
"Impressive....there are great yarns.....Try not marveling at the sheer audacity of Cianci's City Hall, whose stewards, as described in The Prince of Providence, ran a criminal enterprise of kickbacks, shakedowns, and threats worthy of The Sopranos. Try not laughing at Tommy Ricci, a contractor who is almost proud of his payoffs: 'All I did was give kickbacks. Is that a crime or what?' Try not shaking your head over characters with nicknames like Buckles, Blackjack, Bobo and Billy Black....It's hard not to shake off an old Billy Joel lyric: 'I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/Sinners are much more fun.' Yes they are, certainly to an outsider who does not have to live with villainy's consequences." -- New York Times Book Review
"Stanton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, provides an astounding, well-researched account of systmatic government impropriety." -- Entertainment Weekly
''A rich, wide-ranging chronicle....The Prince of Providence is one of the best books about contemporary urban politics, on a par with Buzz Bissinger's A Prayer for the City...It lives up to its publisher's hype as a fine read: 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil meets The Sopranos.' '' -- Steve Weinberg, The Boston Globe
"Forget Harry Potter and Hillary Clinton. If you plan to read only one book this summer, it should be Mike Stanton's The Prince of Providence. Stanton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Providence Journal, has written a funny, engaging, and shocking tale about convicted Providence Mayor Vincent A. 'Buddy' Cianci and the "wiseguys" who surrounded him." -- Professor Darrell West, The Providence Journal
"Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Stanton gives us the full Buddy....With his own brand of marinara sauce, a collection of unconvincing toupees and a flair for aggressive self-promotion, Cianci appeared an endearing rogue. And he was endearing enough aht many Providence voters were willing to over look the criminal intent." -- New York Daily News
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 496 pages
ISBN-10: 0375759670
Item Weight: 0.9 lbs
Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.0 x 8.0 inches
Advance praise for The Prince of Providence
“The Prince of Providence reminds me of Orson Welles’s great line from The Third Man: ‘In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.’ Mike Stanton’s portrait of Mayor Vincent ‘Buddy’ Cianci places Cianci among the Borgias, a late-twentieth-century prince who championed the arts, dark and bright both, to resurrect a great American city.”
—Chris Matthews
“Mike Stanton is our preeminent aficionado and raconteur of Rhode Island’s flamboyantly criminal political follies, and The Prince of Providence is the chronicle of a great American rogue, Mayor Buddy Cianci—a paragon of charisma and corruption.”
—Philip Gourevitch, author of A Cold Case
“Rollicking, frolicking, and superbly reported. Politics has never been this bizarre, this corrupt, or, for that matter, this much fun. Sit back and hold on tight, because The Prince of Providence is one helluva rollercoaster ride.”
—Buzz Bissinger, author of A Prayer for the City and Friday Night Lights
“The Prince of Providence is a gritty, textured account of urban corruption and urban renewal, and a vivid portrait of a charismatic scoundrel and true American original—Rhode Island’s Huey Long.”
—John Taylor, author of The Count and the Confession
“A blistering and memorable portrait of a man and a city . . . the kind of successfully fluid story that could be written only by someone who has seen and connected the dots.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The Prince of Providence reminds me of Orson Welles’s great line from The Third Man: ‘In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.’ Mike Stanton’s portrait of Mayor Vincent ‘Buddy’ Cianci places Cianci among the Borgias, a late-twentieth-century prince who championed the arts, dark and bright both, to resurrect a great American city.”
—Chris Matthews
“Mike Stanton is our preeminent aficionado and raconteur of Rhode Island’s flamboyantly criminal political follies, and The Prince of Providence is the chronicle of a great American rogue, Mayor Buddy Cianci—a paragon of charisma and corruption.”
—Philip Gourevitch, author of A Cold Case
“Rollicking, frolicking, and superbly reported. Politics has never been this bizarre, this corrupt, or, for that matter, this much fun. Sit back and hold on tight, because The Prince of Providence is one helluva rollercoaster ride.”
—Buzz Bissinger, author of A Prayer for the City and Friday Night Lights
“The Prince of Providence is a gritty, textured account of urban corruption and urban renewal, and a vivid portrait of a charismatic scoundrel and true American original—Rhode Island’s Huey Long.”
—John Taylor, author of The Count and the Confession
“A blistering and memorable portrait of a man and a city . . . the kind of successfully fluid story that could be written only by someone who has seen and connected the dots.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Mike Stanton heads the investigative reporting team at The Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s leading newspaper. He has broken stories about mobsters, a crooked governor and a crooked Supreme Court justice, wayward cops and prosecutors, and sleazy bankers and developers. Stanton has also written for The Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, and The Boston Globe. He shared the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, exposing widespread corruption at the Rhode Island Supreme Court. In 1997, he received the Master Reporter Award, for career achievement, from the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. He has also won prizes from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and the Associated Press. He is a graduate of Syracuse University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Stanton lives in Rhode Island with his wife, Susan Hodgin, and their two children.