Little Pussy & Long Branch: Perfect Together Paperback – June 3, 2025

Once the exclusive playground of America and the nation’s first seashore resort town, Long Branch, New Jersey, was home to America’s elite—where the rich and famous, hobnobbed among the city beaches; the opulent Hotels; and the exquisite gambling dens—while seven, sitting United States presidents vacationed at “The Nation’s Summer Capitol.” Its heyday was the 1890’s, but by the 1940’s another kind of “Golden Era,”—a dubious one, engulfed the city—Long Branch become “The Gangster Riviera.”Beginning in the 1960’s, one individual who embodied the very essence of the town, and for 20 years made constant headlines, was Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo, a flamboyant throwback to the gangsters of yesteryear. But after years of complete control over the town and its city government, a young, upstart group of criminals reflecting the changing times, began challenging Russo for supremacy of the city’s underworld in the 1970’s. And drugs were the new scourge threatening Little Pussy’s dominance. Read as the good citizens of Long Branch witnessed the brutal gang war that erupted on city’s streets in real time, resulting in 8 dead bodies littering the Jersey Shore. Read more