Last of the Gladiators

A Memoir of Love, Redemption, and the Mob by the Son of the Legendary Trial Lawyer Jimmy LaRossa

By: James LaRossa Jr.

Narrated by: John Sipple

From the 1960s until the turn of the 21st century, New York City was the world's epicenter of organized and white-collar crime. During those four decades, the most feared Mafia chiefs, assassins, defrocked stockbrokers, Orthodox Jewish money-launderers, and Arab bankers sought the counsel of one man: my father, Jimmy La Rossa, a Kennedy-era prosecutor who became the defense lawyer of first resort in the big, important, highly publicized cases for four full action-packed decades.

On January 30, 2009, I snuck my famous and mortally ill father from New York Presbyterian Hospital to a waiting Medevac jet, where we flew in secret to a place few people would look for two die-hard New Yorkers: a town in Southern California aptly named Manhattan Beach. During our five years in exile, we, "the La Rossa boys" as we came to be known, made our mark as a most irreverent and unrivaled father-son duo. While I cooked him his favorite Italian dishes and kept him alive using the most up-to-date equipment and drugs, he recounted his legendary courtroom exploits.

Not only is Last of the Gladiators a memoir about some of the seminal legal events of a generation, but it's also a love story between a father and son - a theme not often seen in American arts and letters. Not until I wrote that story, though, did I realize that I had not saved my father. He, in fact, saved me. I became a better man and father thanks to him - a more joyous, grateful, and grounded soul.

Jimmy was, and always will be, my "true north".

Previously titled "True North".

©2019 James M. LaRossa, Jr. (P)2019 Bancroft Press

Incredibly Dissapointing

This is one of the worst audible books I have ever read. This is not a memoir of Jimmy LaRossa (which sounds like it would be fascinating) this is a book about James LaRossa Jr. telling the world how amazing a son and person he is. The book has no flow, no character arc, just a recounting of stories that have nothing to do with Jimmy's life or career and everything to do with trying to make James look good.
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