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Madam
- The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 20 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
The compulsively listenable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star, and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the '20s roar - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America.
“Applegate’s tour de force about Jazz Age icon Polly Adler will seize you by the lapels, buy you a drink, and keep you reading until the very last page.... A treat for fiction and nonfiction fans alike." (Abbott Kahler, New York Times best-selling author (as Karen Abbott) of The Ghosts of Eden Park)
Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring '20s became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld - and had a good time doing it.
As a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.
Critic reviews
"Pearl to Polly, shtetl child to savvy New Yorker, Brooklyn corset factory girl to Manhattan’s most notorious brothel owner: Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate, tells a fast-paced tale of radical, willful transformation. . .Replete with accounts of Polly’s many court battles, newspaper headlines, mobster dealings and society gossip, Madam is a breathless tale told through extraordinary research.” --The New York Times Book Review
"A biography that is also a story of America bursting into the modern age, with new roles for women, new rules for couples, and parties that flowed into rooms down the hall.” --CBS Sunday Morning
“[Madam] is. . .a hugely digressive book in the best possible way: You meet a lot of gangsters and high rollers in Adler’s New York, and they cross paths with novelists, entertainers, professional boxers, and now and then a mayor or a Rockefeller.” --Curbed
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- HMY
- 12-12-21
Story of 20 through the eyes of a madam
I was hesitant at first as I never heard of this madam . But her story on NYT and then cbs Sunday got me interested. And I enjoyed all the history of this biography. So many big names but beyond the skin trade this book is an eye opening on chat happen in the -st half 20th century in NEW YORK And the early start of the entertainment industry high broadway and Hollywood.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Lois Fox
- 12-03-21
Debby Applegate is amazing!
This book is a masterful undertaking. I was very moved by the fact that a little girl was sent to another country and left to fend for herself. Holly Adler was truly a survivor and a historical icon. Debby is a class act!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Janis
- 11-20-21
thumbs up
a story that needed to be told to help understand women's roles as players in evolution of American society. extremely well written and narrated
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3 people found this helpful
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- Brad Berens
- 11-16-21
Thrilling ride through roaring 20s—Page-turner!
Polly Adler is Horacio Alger of the sexy underworld. Her trials and tribulations make for a breathtaking romp through three decades of shifting American attitudes about sex, women in business, and the immigrant experience. Beautifully read. Applegate’s got a great ear for story & dialogue.
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3 people found this helpful
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- David
- 12-29-21
Broadway's Underside
“Madam” is the lively, fascinating tale of Polly Adler, a poor but plucky immigrant who developed the premier brothel in New York City in the gangster days of the ‘20s and ‘30. Her houses drew famous playwrights, musicians, actors and politicians, some seeking her company more than her women. But Polly also befriended hoodlums and killers like Arnold Rothstein and Dutch Schultz, and she had to put up with constant pressure from dishonest policemen demanding bribes. The book displays the transient glamor of her business and her life, but it also displays the ruined lives, the despair, the violence and the graft. The book is about more than just Polly Adler: it’s a kaleidoscopic view of nightlife and show business in New York City during Prohibition and the Depression.
Debby Applegate writes with a light, gossipy tone, using a lot of slang that gives the book a flavor of Polly’s Broadway world. The author names names, many still familiar today. She builds suspense as civic leaders try to shut down the gangs and the brothels, and the gangsters fight back. She doesn’t hide Polly’s follies, but she shows enough of the challenges of immigrant poverty to justify Polly’s determination to crawl up and out. Overall, “Madam” is an entertaining and well-researched biography of a woman and her era.
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2 people found this helpful
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- SW
- 11-15-21
Loved Madam!
Kept my attention from start to finish. This book was worth the wait. Suspenseful and engaging.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Angy
- 08-14-22
Wow
Such a great memoir/biography!
This book makes me feel like a fly on all of the best walls but only for the interesting parts and there are loads of those.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joshua DeLisle
- 05-12-22
Extremely interesting story! Well worth the listen
To qualify all of this, I am not a literary expert. That being said, I found this book to be engaging.
The reader did a great job keeping the material lively, even when having to recite dates and other historical material that can come across boring to some.
I feel like I learned a few things about the Era and gained some perspective.
I would recommend it to history lovers, people interested in economics, or people interested in the business practices of a Great Depression Era Madam...
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- Joseph Pierce
- 04-02-22
Great Biography of working woman
Creative and historically compelling story of a woman who used her bravery and desire for stability to build a business in a male dominated and dangerous era. Fun story telling of a little talked about job option for women during the jazz age.
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- Kittygayle McMoon
- 02-24-22
Colorful Woman centered historical fiction
Polly Adler‘s spunk, fortitude, determination, loyalty, strength and ingenuity were rife in this very well-written, interesting saga which brought to life the roaring era of America’s history and showed a side of it that we don’t often see. It is a down to earth revealing of human nature and the personalities of different famous people in our history and how what they did that no one knew they did has helped form us as the people we are (albeit a “seedy side” or not).
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- The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Gary Galone
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....
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History from the bottom up
- By Mark on 12-12-21
By: Michael Cannell
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Gangster Squad
- Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles
- By: Paul Lieberman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums from Los Angeles after WWII. In 1946, the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Sgt. Jack O’Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick....
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Nothing Like the movie
- By KEITH on 02-21-13
By: Paul Lieberman
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Supreme City
- How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Frangione Jim
- Length: 29 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In four words - "the capital of everything" - Duke Ellington captured Manhattan during one of the most exciting and celebrated eras in our history: The Jazz Age. Radio, tabloid newspapers, and movies with sound appeared. The silver screen took over Times Square as Broadway became America's movie mecca. Tremendous new skyscrapers were built in Midtown in one of the greatest building booms in history.
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the background to the NYC we now live in
- By Marcie on 03-05-15
By: Donald L. Miller
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"The Rest of Us"
- The Rise of America's Eastern European Jews
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined.
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Book 3 of 3
- By Etoile NEOhio on 11-15-22
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The Vapors
- A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice
- By: David Hill
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Back in the days before Vegas was big, when the Mob was at its peak and neon lights were but a glimmer on the horizon, a little Southern town styled itself as a premier destination for the American leisure class. Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, Art Deco splendor, and America's original national park - as well as horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless backrooms and brothels, and some of the country’s most bald-faced criminals.
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If you don’t live in Arkansas…
- By JohnFern0813 on 08-14-20
By: David Hill
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Stonewall
- The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America
- By: Martin Duberman
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history.
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Very interesting.
- By Ryan F on 06-17-23
By: Martin Duberman
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A Brotherhood Betrayed
- The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Gary Galone
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....
-
-
History from the bottom up
- By Mark on 12-12-21
By: Michael Cannell
-
Gangster Squad
- Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles
- By: Paul Lieberman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums from Los Angeles after WWII. In 1946, the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Sgt. Jack O’Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick....
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Nothing Like the movie
- By KEITH on 02-21-13
By: Paul Lieberman
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Supreme City
- How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Frangione Jim
- Length: 29 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In four words - "the capital of everything" - Duke Ellington captured Manhattan during one of the most exciting and celebrated eras in our history: The Jazz Age. Radio, tabloid newspapers, and movies with sound appeared. The silver screen took over Times Square as Broadway became America's movie mecca. Tremendous new skyscrapers were built in Midtown in one of the greatest building booms in history.
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the background to the NYC we now live in
- By Marcie on 03-05-15
By: Donald L. Miller
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Tokyo Underworld
- The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan
- By: Robert Whiting
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans. Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters. At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945 and whose restaurant soon became the rage throughout the city and the chief watering hole for celebrities, diplomats, sports figures, and mobsters.
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A Man with a fork in a world of soup
- By Kindle Customer on 09-01-20
By: Robert Whiting
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Paddy Whacked
- The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Paddy Whacked, best-selling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and seemingly untouchable Southie legend.
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First Half - 4 Stars - Second Half - 2 Stars
- By Lulu on 08-29-16
By: T. J. English
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At the Sands
- The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out with a Bang
- By: David G. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The lights are coming down. Frank, Dean, and Sammy are about to take the stage. This is the moment we remember, when Las Vegas became classic. And it was at the Sands. Built in 1952 over the ashes of Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson’s last chance in Las Vegas, the Sands was a collective effort. Underworld figures like Meyer Lansky, Doc Stacher, and Frank Costello provided the cash.
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At the Sands
- By Deedra on 10-14-21
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Boxing and the Mob
- The Notorious History of the Sweet Science
- By: Jeffrey Sussman
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire 20th century.
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Great Book
- By Lester Boggs on 05-22-19
By: Jeffrey Sussman
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The Plaza
- The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall<