What mafia book should I buy?

Which mafia book should I buy, can someone please give me any ideas?

I suppose it depends on what you're after, Big Shot Rob (e.g., a biography on one gangster, on a whole gang, or on a certain Mafia event like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre). I've been a gangster movie fan for a long time, but just recently got into books on gangsters. I wanted biographies of mob figures within a certain Family, so I bought Sammy Gravano's Underboss as well as Gotti: Rise and Fall. I'm not necessarily recommending these (although Gotti: Rise and Fall is pretty decent), but just showing you how I went about what I was looking for. I also wanted what you might call a "Mafia-for-dummies" book, so I bought The Mafia Encyclopedia by Carl Sifakis. It's an excellent quick reference book on Mafia figures, terminology, etc. and costs about $20. Anyway, happy reading, man! (And in case I haven't formally greeted you before, welcome aboard, dude!)

Thanks a lot for the help...I actually bought Hoffa Wars and then I am buying Mafia Dynasty, I will get others later, I hope these are good though.

I would try the last testament of Lucky Luciano, Donnie Brasco, and WiseGuys

Good choice Mafia Dynasty is a great book. The Hoffa Wars was pretty good too.

Don't forget there is loads on thhe web...and you already pay to be there. Find something good, post it so we all can see it!

Blood and Power is a really good book on the mafia. It got lots of good details.

The Mafia - The First Hundred Years was pretty good, it doesn't really mention much about the more recent figures, but it's a good insight into the older members.

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi - the basis for Goodfellas. Like the film, it's a narrative of the everyday life of Henry Hill, a foot soldier.

I'm thinking about getting The Outfit. Its about the Mob in chicago. It looks really good.

Try "The Black Book and the Mob," which is the definitive book about the Mafia and Nevada.

I guess I misread canaveral's post then...

-Lucky

CRIME LAB

Read EVERYBODY's Biography!!!!

OR go to the Library and order....

Nicholas Pileggi's Casino: LOve And Honor In Las Vegas

Nicholas Pilleggi's Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family

Carl Sifakis' The Mafia Encyclopedia

Joeseph O'Brien and Andris Kurin's Boss Of Bosses: The FBI and Paul Castellano

Joe Bonanno's A Man Of Honor

Robert Lacey's LIttle Man

Bill Bonanno's Bound By Honor

Peter Maas' The Valachi Papers

:D Mafia Dynasty is an excellent book. I hope you enjoy it.

:D Mafia Dynasty is an excellent book. I hope you enjoy it.[/b][/quote]I second that. I would also like to add Mafia Kingfish. It's about Carlos Marcello and the assassination of John F Kennedy.

I just finished a book called " Murder Machine" its about the DeMeo gang and how they would lure there victims into their club or bar they would stab the victim numerous times than they would hang the body upside down in the shower to let the blood drain out,while doing so they would eat pizza and play cards. Than they would dismember the body and dispose of it. These guys were ruthless cold blooded killers. Roy Demeo was the leader he got carried away with too much killing that in fact the commision wanted him whacked. They approached John Gotti himself and he didn't want the contract!!!! He was even intimidated but Roy and his crew. Excellent book by far! My all time favorite of all true life mob books.

Reference books :

"History of the Mafia -from the origins to nowadays" (title translation mine, I have it in French) by Salvatore Lupo

"Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the US" by Robert J. Kelly

"Family Business" by Ianni

The Last Mafioso by Jimmy 'The Weasel' Fratianno had a good deal of inside stuff that was pretty interesting.

Yes it does BronxKing! That's the book I refered to in the "RatPack" topic which I believe is in this forum. That's the book that has the pic of Ole'Blue Eyes with all his wiseguy friends. You can see Jimmy "the Weasel" on the right of the photo.

what are some good book stores to buy these books in and does anybody know where online there may be some books available to read 4 free...im looking for something online thats intresting like Luca Brasi mentioned the story of the family who was hanging bodies upside down in the tub...i wanna find sumthing interesting like that to read..mob stories sumwhere online...anybody got any links? Thanks.

Try gangland.com and mafiamob.com--both have good writing on gangs.

Thanks for the links but unfortuneatly MafiaMob.com costs $$$ and GangLand.com isnt a mob site but I think u meant GangLandNews.com. Thanks though.

If you want a good insight and truly cultured look into Sicily's Mafia read "Midnight in Sicily" by Peter Robb I think. Theres a great chapter on Naples too, including the Cammora and the N'drangheta. Theres a lot of names thrown about in it and I could understand it to be a little confusing but if you've got a basic bit of backround on it, it will be a good read for you.

Well I don't believe you can read them for free online. But the book I mentioned "Murder Machine" is avalible at any Barnes and Noble bookstore. That's were I got mine in the "True Crimes" section of the store.
Or you can go to their website: http://www.bn.com type in title of book in the search engine and order it online.

Trust me I highly suggest this book to everyone! You won't be able to put it down when you start reading it.

Here's a reveiw:

First-rate story of a Mafia murder crew so deadly that even John Gotti turned aside a contract on its leader. New York Daily News reporters Mustain and Capeci (coauthors, Mob Star, 1989—not reviewed) tell the fascinating and repellently detailed story of Roy DeMeo and the gang he raised from teenagers in Canarsie—a Brooklyn neighborhood where death by natural causes is "six bullets in the head," according to one cop. The middle-class DeMeo, a natural criminal, was carrying cash in brown paper bags and driving a Cadillac by his high- school senior year. After establishing loan-sharking headquarters at his Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn, he shipped scores of stolen luxury cars to Kuwait, distributed drugs (one of his crew was the chief supplier of cocaine at Studio 54), and wholesaled child pornography. When the inevitable business disputes arose, his crew simply made the other parties disappear. The victims were lured into a clubhouse behind the Gemini Lounge, where they were shot and dismembered ("it's just like takin' apart a deer"), then secured in Hefty Bags and tossed on the Canarsie dump. One murder led so easily to another that soon the "Gemini method" was used on anybody who got in the gang's way or annoyed them. DeMeo presented three of his coke-crazed crew with sets of custom carving knives, which they kept in their car trunks in case a quick assignment arose. When a special NYPD/FBI task force cracked the DeMeo gang, it tagged the criminals for 75 murders. DeMeo (who was rubbed out by fellow mobsters as the cops closed in) bragged of one hundred personally, making him far more destructive than any known US serial killer. Vivid, hair-raising, day-to-day-in-the-life-ofnarrative: the best mob book in recent memory. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—)

Hope this helps Goodfella 69

Well I don't believe you can read them for free online. But the book I mentioned "Murder Machine" is avalible at any Barnes and Noble bookstore. That's were I got mine in the "True Crimes" section of the store.
Or you can go to their website: http://www.bn.com type in title of book in the search engine and order it online.

Trust me I highly suggest this book to everyone! You won't be able to put it down when you start reading it.

Here's a reveiw:

First-rate story of a Mafia murder crew so deadly that even John Gotti turned aside a contract on its leader. New York Daily News reporters Mustain and Capeci (coauthors, Mob Star, 1989—not reviewed) tell the fascinating and repellently detailed story of Roy DeMeo and the gang he raised from teenagers in Canarsie—a Brooklyn neighborhood where death by natural causes is "six bullets in the head," according to one cop. The middle-class DeMeo, a natural criminal, was carrying cash in brown paper bags and driving a Cadillac by his high- school senior year. After establishing loan-sharking headquarters at his Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn, he shipped scores of stolen luxury cars to Kuwait, distributed drugs (one of his crew was the chief supplier of cocaine at Studio 54), and wholesaled child pornography. When the inevitable business disputes arose, his crew simply made the other parties disappear. The victims were lured into a clubhouse behind the Gemini Lounge, where they were shot and dismembered ("it's just like takin' apart a deer"), then secured in Hefty Bags and tossed on the Canarsie dump. One murder led so easily to another that soon the "Gemini method" was used on anybody who got in the gang's way or annoyed them. DeMeo presented three of his coke-crazed crew with sets of custom carving knives, which they kept in their car trunks in case a quick assignment arose. When a special NYPD/FBI task force cracked the DeMeo gang, it tagged the criminals for 75 murders. DeMeo (who was rubbed out by fellow mobsters as the cops closed in) bragged of one hundred personally, making him far more destructive than any known US serial killer. Vivid, hair-raising, day-to-day-in-the-life-ofnarrative: the best mob book in recent memory. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—)

Hope this helps Goodfella 69 [/b][/quote]Thanks Luca! That was a great review...Ill make sure to pick that up once I get the $$$ and a ride to the local bookstore

Thanks Luca! That was a great review...Ill make sure to pick that up once I get the $$$ and a ride to the local bookstore [/QB][/QUOTE]

Here's another reveiw-

A modern-day ``Murder, Incorporated,'' the vicious Gambino crime family crew led by Roy DeMeo committed upward of 200 murders. Most victims were fellow criminals, but contrary to the supposed Mafia code, many were hapless civilians. So brutal and pathological were DeMeo's cohorts that even crime boss John Gotti reportedly feared them. The crew was convicted (DeMeo was murdered) in part by the testimony of Dominick Montiglio, a primary source for this book. Montiglio, a former Green Beret who became a mobster through the influence of his Mafia uncle, presents first-hand evidence of mob treachery and depravity. The authors , who wrote about Gotti in Mob Star (Franklin Watts, 1988) , tell a vivid, chilling tale that should dispel any remaining romantic myths about Mafia life. Highly recommended for crime collections.

Mustain and Capeci, reporters for the New York Daily News , here present a feature expose of Roy DeMeo, leader of a pack of especially gruesome hit men known as the Murder Machine. DeMeo's crew was so ``scary,'' according to an FBI agent quoted here, that even then-Mafia don John Gotti was wary of them. By the FBI's estimate, the Murder Machine killed at least 200 people before it was dismantled during the 1980s in what proved to be the longest federal serial murder investigation in history. Mustain and Capeci's main informant about the case was Dominick Montiglio, nephew of a top aide in the Gambino family. DeMeo, in his turn, was killed by a volley of shots fired at close range; his body, stuffed into the trunk of his Cadillac, was found in Brooklyn in January 1983, a week after this devoted father failed to show up for his daughter's birthday party. No one was ever convicted of the murder. In a masterpiece of crime reporting, the authors re-create the DeMeo underworld in gripping detail.

Pretty intense!!

You must read The Merger. The best book about the Mafia i've ever read.

Never heard of that I'll check it out.

Grazi

Never heard of that I'll check it out.

Grazi[/b][/quote]Here a small review:
When telecommunications companies merge, the news is immediately analyzed by the media and government agencies. Owners of the companies' stock immediately vote on the wisdom of the move by buying or selling. But when criminal organizations merge and make their operations global, it takes years for law enforcement to figure out what happened, who was involved, and what the implications are. Ever since Italian-American mobster Lucky Luciano linked Mafia families in Sicily and the U.S., crime cartels have been finding ways to expand their operations across national borders, making those countries' policemen play an extended game of catch-up. Jeffrey Robinson is an authority on international crime, especially money laundering, and his book The Merger sometimes reads like a crime novel. It seems strange to imagine that Mexican drug traffickers would be working closely with Thai postal workers; that a billion dollars a month in drug money would be laundered from Russian gangs through Greek Cypriots and then moved on to respectable financial centers such as London and New York; that Colombian drug cartels would get kerosene--an important ingredient for making cocaine--from Turkmenistan by way of Argentina; that Eastern European criminals would claim to be Jewish so they could get Israeli passports and launder money in the Holy Land. And that's just for-profit criminality--politically and religiously motivated crime has long been international and is rapidly branching out into cyberterrorism.

Robinson concludes with a note that international drug trafficking is growing so fast it now represents 2 percent of the world's economy. However, while criminal organizations think globally, Robinson writes, most law enforcement is set up to act locally. Nations can't decide how to deal with the problem because none wants to be the first to sacrifice national sovereignty for the greater purpose of slowing crime. If this book doesn't keep you up at night, or at least raise some serious goose flesh, you're made of pretty stern stuff.

If yiou think you like it then you can find more details over here:

The Merger

Mafia Princess is also a good read. The daughter of Sam Giancana tells the story. she tells everything from inside their house, some rooms are soundproofed for the FBI's not to hear the meetings of the bosses(FBI man use telescopic microphone). how it is like to be a daughter of a Mafia Boss, her experience in hollywood. how she was treated by the bigwigs because she is the daughter of Sam. a lot of name droppings like Frank Sinatra(who is Sam's close friend), the Kennedy's, Hollywood etc. . .and Sam's life in the mob and his associates. . .

GoodFella

Not quite a mafia book but includes it.

I'd like to recommend King of the Mountain by Billy J Chandler. It is the most unbiased view i've ever read on Salvatore Giuliano. One of my main favourite parts of it is the detail in which it goes into the disaster at the Porta Della Ginestra.

It's quite a very political read, goes into Giulianos views and his fight for Sicily to become the 49th state.

Also I came across AmericanMafia.com and it has a huge collection of books on the mafia with short synopsis'. Here youse go. More reading

I have a read a large quantity of books on the mafia. Heres a list of my recommendations.
- Mafia Dynasty
- The Complete Idiots Guide to the Mafia
- Gotti: Rise and Fall
- Mario Puzo's collection

heres one i havent seen anyone write about its the one that got me goin years ago "The Mafia Man"