ok, was there anything in those pages at the archives that you felt should have been in the book. or, were their any revelations concerning the cosa nostra that were not in the book. I guess I should say was it worth your while to go over the pages, and will what you read contribute to your research.
Yes, there's some interesting things in Valachi's manuscript. I don't recall if I used much of it. Dave Critchley used some for what he wrote about Buster from Chicago. There's a few more details in the manuscript than what was found in the Maas book. Alex Hortis may have used some things for his book too.
Modern researchers can make more sense of the extra details in the manuscript than writers from the 1960s because we have learned so much since then. A few things that I remember that were interesting was that when he was a kid he lived on 108th Street in East Harlem. In 1912 a lady named Pasquarella Spinelli was killed in her stable (you can read about the infamous Murder Stable online); he went over there and spat on her dead body because once she kicked him out when he tried to sleep there. Later on he talked about a top guy to Ciro Terranova named Big Dick Amato (in the 1920s I don't think there was a sexual meaning to his name) who was killed in 1930, and he had some run-ins with him. There's a few more details about Buster from Chicago. Toward the end of the book he goes on a rant why bosses like Vito Genovese are unfair to soldiers like Joe Valachi.
Since you haven't read the manuscript I can tell you that it's not an easy read. A single paragraph can go on for several pages. So can a single sentence. Valachi did some crazy page numbering, like he could go from pages 1 to 10, then go page 10a, 10b, 10c and so on before going to page 11.
