The parts about Chuckie are interesting. The author made it a memoir as much as trying to exonerate is stepfather, so I can't say it was great.

"I had many reasons to think the truth would be elusive, and not just because of Chuckie's evasions. As one FBI agent who worked the case in the 1970s told me, much of what the public knows about Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance is "science fiction." For forty-five years, public knowledge has been shaped by unreliable informants, tendentious government leaks, credulous journalists, or aging (and now-dead) mob figures looking to make a buck. Book after book and article after article has provided different theories of Hoffa's death, almost all of which involve Chuckie. And yet there is still not one single piece of direct evident about what happened to Hoffa on the afternoon of July 30, 1975."

When I was growing up, my mother would often comment about the state of my bedroom or closet with a comment, "Jimmy Hoffa's probably in there somewhere." You might imagine that in grade school I had no idea what she was talking about. At some point I came to understand Hoffa's disappearance in vague terms. Then I heard Jack Goldsmith talking about this book on Fresh Air and I wanted to know more.

This is a hell of a book. It's like five books all in one. It's part a brief history of organized labor, a brief history of Italian organized crime, a brief history of government surveillance, a discussion of the Hoffa disappearance, and it's also a memoir about a son and his step-father. The stories are layered and interestingly told. I learned a lot. I ended up reading it not long after I watched "The Irishman" and I'm ready to start a justice for Chuckie campaign.

If you're just here to see who did it, don't worry Goldsmith even with all his Justice Department connections can't crack the Hoffa cold case either. We'll probably never know. What's clear (I think) is that Chuckie was not involved with the disappearance, and that the focus on Chuckie stopped the FBI from investigating other leads and probably destroying our odds of ever find out what really happened. And at this point it's like the finale of Game of Thrones it's not going to be as satisfying as you want it to be. But it's still a hell of a story. Would recommend, especially if you want to know more about Hoffa.

"This book started off as an effort to understand Chuckie's role in Hoffa's disappearance, but it grew to be about much more. It is about how a hapless blabbermouth with famously terrible judgement served as a close aide to both Hoffa and a top Detroit mob figure, both of whom trusted him with their most intimate secrets. It is about how an uneducated serial lawbreaker with mob values nourished his vulnerable stepson at a critical stage in his life to set him on a path that led to the Justice Department and Harvard Law School. It's about Chuckie's life, and mine, in the forty-five year vortex of the Hoffa disappearance, and my changing thoughts, over the course of my life, about these events. And it is about what I learned about truth-telling-from Chuckie's tragic ensnarement between two ruthless father figures and implacable government investigators, and from my relationship with Chuckie."

Heard the author discussing the book on a podcast and thought it sounded intriguing. I knew the basics of the Hoffa story but I've never been a close follower, so much of this book was relatively new to me. Plenty of backstory on Hoffa, the Teamsters and the Mafia involvement. But the interesting part of this book was the relationship between the author and Chuckie O'Brien, Hoffa's close confidant. Just a fascinating look at the relationship between a stepfather/stepson and how it morphed over time. All in the shadow of Hoffa and his disappearance.

Recommended
8/10

I've always been fascinated with Hoffa. I grew up in Detroit during his hay days and can recall driving past the Teamster union hall on Trumbull Ave. My grandfather lived right around the corner. I actually got to shake his hand one time when I briefly moved back to Detroit in the early 70's. He has just been pardoned by Nixon. Strong handshake. O'Brien writes a very moving account of his father's (step father) relationship with Hoffa and while doing so paints a nostalgic picture of labor's by gone era. I am a sucker for a good mafia story and this one didn't let me down.

It's a story many of us remember but we've never heard so much from the inside. Jack Goldsmith has a unique perspective of the details of the story of Hoffa's mysterious disappearance being the stepson of Chuckie O'Brien, Hoffa's longtime sidekick, goffer and, some believe, his illegitimate son. This is a story that waited to be told until Chuckie died and, a few months after he did, Goldsmith authorized the book's release.

You may need a guide to all the various characters, a map of the places (which Goldsmith does summarize in the appendix) and a timeline of the main events. Nevertheless, Goldsmith writes well and you can envision the book becoming a movie. It's said that the recent movie "The Irishman", is a fictional adaption of the story.

I found the book and easy and quick read until the final chapters when the story got to Hoffa's disappearance. His rise in and takeover of the Teamsters, along with the involvement of the "Company" (aka, the Mafia, or LCN) is fascinating. But the intrigue and subsequent FBI investigations of his disappearance are sometimes hard to follow. Nevertheless, even though it didn't reveal much that we didn't know before I'm glad I took the time to read it.