Borgata Rise of empire : a history of the American Mafia

Former mobster Ferrante (Mob Rules) supplies a fascinating inside look at the history of the Mafia, the first entry in a three-volume series charting the rise of Italian organized crime. Drawing a straight line from the bond between Italian feudal lords and serfs to the ties between 20th-century Mafia dons and "soldiers," Ferrante convincingly examines how "men of honor" controlled labor in Sicily, and how, through mass immigration to the United States from 1880 to 1930, they brought those customs stateside. He notes that it was lawless New Orleans where the first American Mafia (or "borgata") families made their mark, before prohibition facilitated the rise of East Coast families who allied with Jewish gangsters to distribute alcohol. While burning through bios of such infamous names as Dutch Schultz, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano, Ferrante exhumes some oft-overlooked tales, including that of the close partnership between the New York families and the Navy to protect Eastern shorelines during WWII. Ferrante's familiarity with Mafia customs gives flesh and immediacy to what could otherwise be a rote historical tome, but he doesn't draw his authority from affiliation alone: this is a well-researched history in its own right. True crime fans will be captivated. Agent: Tara Hiatt, Orion. (Jan.)

A former mobster excavates mafia lore. Ferrante, the author of Mob Rules and former mafia associate and heist expert, promises that this first volume of a planned trilogy will be free of misinformation repeated over the years by multiple mafia historians. He begins at the beginning, with the germination of the mafia in medieval Sicily under French occupation. From there, he winds into the American mafia's peak from the 1930s to the 1960s. Ferrante's primary focus is the rise and fall of Charles "Lucky" Luciano and his associates and adversaries, including his partner, Jewish organized-crime legend Meyer Lansky; their West Coast counterpart Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel; and Luciano's successors, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. Drawing on his experience as an ex-mobster, Ferrante argues that mafia standards of loyalty, secrecy, and revenge call for rewriting some of the mob's most famous myths with a better grasp of the details and motivations involved. He peppers his stories with enlightening morsels about the conditions that facilitated the rise and impunity of organized criminals, touching on topics like ingrained corruption in New Orleans, mobsters' pride in being Americans, and the surprising discernment the mafia showed in choosing which illicit activities to pursue. However, the tangled and tumultuous nature of mob-based relationships and activities is echoed by a text filled with long threads of names and events that weave in and out of order, with stiff segues between episodes. Exhausting play-by-plays of a wide array of crimes fill pages, while others are simply alluded to. This approach frustrates rather than clarifies readers' understanding of the mafia's complicated strands of business, political, and personal relationships, which snaked around Prohibition and World War II, into and out of Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and Cuba. An intermittently entertaining but rudderless exploration of the early history of the mafia. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.