Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power - A Dispatch from the Beach

A colorful history of Miami Beach, America's 'Riviera'

From its founding at the turn of the last century by an anti-Semitic and wealthy industrialist, through its days as a haven for northern mobsters, ground zero for cocaine cowboys, the haven for Cubans freeing Castro's tyranny, to its current status as a playground for the rich and famous, this is a gritty, behind-the-scenes exposė of one of America's most unusual cities. It is a city created by dreamers and schemers and its history ultimately serves as a steroid-injected cautionary tale.

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PRESS:

A hair-raising new book about Miami's wild past.
- The Daily Telegraph

Everyone deserves a weekend in South Beach from time to time, and as it turns out, Posner is an able chronicler of the slummier side of South Florida. What interests him most is the story -- and it's a pretty good one -- of how South Beach rose from the wreckage that was 1970s-era Miami Beach.
- Bryan Burroughs, New York Times Book Review

Nothing fascinates like corruption, and here is corruption writ large, a morality tale for our time. Here, in fascinating detail, is a city driven entirely by greed and growth, where bribery, chicanery, graft and nepotism are merely how things are done...
- St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

A colorful look at the astonishing assortment of characters and cultures that earns Miami's description as America's Babylon.
- Booklist

The story is fast-moving and colorful.
- Kirkus Reviews

Posner does a masterful job of book-ending "Miami Babylon" with the boom and bust cycles of development.
- Grand Rapids Press (Michigan)

Gerald Posner's 'Miami Babylon' is grittier than a walk on the beach.
- Fort Worth Star-Telegram