Russell Shorto’s Grandpa Was a ‘Smalltime’ Mobster

Russell Shorto joins us.  In his new book, “Smalltime,” after much throat clearing and hedging about not being a memoirist, Russell Shorto — a master of historical narrative — digs up the facts on his family. Until now, Shorto has written books mostly about people he’s never met, trying to get inside the heads of Peter Stuyvesant in “The Island at the Center of the World”; Baruch Spinoza in “Amsterdam”; and George Washington in his last book, “Revolution Song.” But the most fascinating characters in those books — for Shorto and for the reader — are always the ones that history has forgotten. An Italian-American whose family name was changed long ago from Sciotto, Shorto comes from a small-time criminal clan in Johnstown, Pa., people you have never heard of before. History has not forgotten them. It never knew them to begin with.  More at www.CooperandAnthony.com