Best: A tie between "Five Families," by Selwyn Raab, and "Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life," by Robert Lacey.

Worst: There are SOOOOO many bad ones it's hard to really say which is the worst. The Carlo books are awful (although I did respect the man for the way he fought his illness). The Bill Roemer books are a disgrace, even if they do make for interesting historical fiction. The problem is, they weren't marketed that way. He'd have you believe they were the Gospel truth. And pretty much anything written by a relative of a dead wiseguy (the Giancanas, the Capones, the Gottis, et al.) Those people deserve a special place in Hell just for trying to justify the lifestyles of their lost loved ones, then trying to cash in on the family name.