Rich Cohen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tough Jews; Monsters; Sweet and Low; When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead (with Jerry Weintraub); The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones; and The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse. He is a co-creator of the HBO series Vinyl and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications. He is the author of The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation (Spiegel & Grau). Albert Hicks had long been known in the dive bars and gin joints of the Five Points, the most dangerous neighborhood in maritime Manhattan. His criminal career reached its peak in 1860, when he was hired, under an alias, as a hand on an oyster sloop. His plan was to rob the ship and flee, disappearing into the teeming streets of lower Manhattan. But the plan went awry—the ship was found listing and unmanned in the foggy straits of Coney Island—and the voyage that was to enrich him instead led to his last desperate flight. Rich Cohen tells the story of this notorious underworld figure, from his humble origins to the wild, globe-crossing, bacchanalian crime spree that forged his ruthlessness and his reputation, to his ultimate incarnation as a demon who terrorized lower Manhattan, at a time when pirates anchored off 14th Street.
