When I first heard about “God’s Bankers, A History of Money and Power at the Vatican,” which reveals some deep dark secrets about the history of the Vatican’s finances, I immediately thought to myself, “who would have the nerve to author something like that? Let me introduce you to my Miami neighbor, Gerald Posner, 60, who worked on this book along with his wife Trisha, (an author in her own right) on-and-off for the last nine years.

Today Gerald emailed me amazing news. His book climbed to number 13 on the New York Times best selling list. It debuted less than a week ago. This follows a major feature in the Wall Street Journal that spotlighted the book’s efforts to get Pope Francis to open files at the Vatican that should reveal the church’s financial dealings with Hitler.

A number of folks asked me if the Posners are worried about anyone attacking them because of the subject matter. “You can’t be an investigative reporter and worry about that,” he said. “I worry more about crossing the street.” Look at the list of books (below this post) Posner has written before, and some of them are just as provoking.

I asked Gerald about how the Internet has changed the life of the investigative reporter. He said that for a historical book like God’s Bankers, many of the files he needed have not yet been digitized. He therefore traveled to many foreign cities to gather information. “You can’t be an armchair investigative reporter. You have to get out to talk to people who might know something or go to government agencies to comb their files and random paperwork.”

Posner admits that maybe, five years from now, all files will be online. Strangely enough, he is not totally thrilled with that. “If all my research is available online, that means I could possibly work around the clock. There is always one more thing to look up. I would never sleep.”

Posner did reveal the sites he uses for his research. Make sure you check back to compare your research resources against his.

Bibliography

1-Mengele: The Complete Story (1986)

2-Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies

3-The New Mafia (1988)

4-Bio-Assassins (1989)

5- Assassination of JFK (1993)

6-Citizen Perot: His Life and Times (1996)

7-Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998)

8-Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11

9-Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power (Music of the Great Lakes) (2003)

10-Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection (2005)

11-Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power –

12-A Dispatch From the Beach (2009)

13-God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican (2015) Simon & Schuster