Good advice, Ivan.

I'll just add that "Five Families," by Selwyn Raab, is probably the most thoroughly researched and complete book I've ever read on the history of the New York mafia. In my opinion, Raab's background in journalism is what sets this book apart from most of the other "true crime" writers. They try too hard to make the books dramatic.

For example, when I see dialogue that we know has been made up, I want to set the book on fire.

Aham.There's so many different books on internet..Some of them called "Donnie Brasco" and some of them "The Way of Wiseguy",is there any differences?


(Is that book good for mafia knowledge?)

Aham. (sic)

Joe Pistone has released a number of books with different collaborators.

To my knowledge (I haven't read Way of the Wiseguy) they are different books, albeit ones that revolve around the times of Donnie Brasco, Bonanno assosciate circa. late 70's early 80's.

His books make good intro's to LCN and NY mobsters. From what I can gather, Way of the Wiseguy concenrates more on the personalities/mindsets of the guys he was around.

A better book to start with would be the ones Ivan and PB reccommended. "Idiots Guide" is a great work on the basic histories of LCN across North America, while Five Families delves deeper into New York, right up until about 2005. It really is a great book on the subject, one of the best IMO.

Pizza Boy is right - he should definitely check out 5 Families. It's about New York only, but in spite of what fanboys of other families say New York is and always has been the ceneter of the majority of mob activity(even back when all 25 or so families were flourishing, including the Outfit, probably at least more than 50% of Italian-American mob activity was concentrated in New York and its immediate surroundings, like east New Jersey - and today it's probably 95%), and you should get a good grounding in them if you want to understand the mafia in any meaningful way.

Yeah, read Five Families after The Idiot's Guide to the Mafia, but before the other stuff.

I also recommend watching Goodfellas and Casino if you haven't already, though bear in mind that the mob is "prettied up" a bit in those. (Henry Hill is a grotesque little lizard man in real life - certainly not a Ray Liotta type guy).

And if you're really hard core, check out The Origins of Organized Crime in America for a thorough rundown of pretty much everything that is known about the origins of the mob. It's also essential because it dismantles a lot of myths in the standard mob historiography.

As for Pistone's books: Donnie Brasco is pretty good, but the rest I got the feeling that Pistone cranked them out because he wanted to buy a new boat or something. Didn't he also write some retarded "new adventures of Donnie Brasco" novel or something?

A very good read on the Kansas City Mafia, is Mobsters in our Midst by Former FBIOC strice force supervisor William Owsley. Also contains a lot of good photos.

Is there any differences between these two books?It's almost same book with some different things in name?

http://cache0.bookdepository.com/assets/images/book/small/9780/7624/9780762418398.jpg

http://cache0.bookdepository.com/assets/images/book/medium/9780/7624/9780762423842.jpg



The Way of the Wiseguy: The FBI's Most Famous Undercover Agent Cracks the Mob Mind and The Way of the Wiseguy: True Stories from the FBI's Most Famous Undercover Agent ?If there's a difference,which one describes mobsters best?

Same book, Dude.

It's really just more of the same from Pistone, but it comes with a decent cd of some Bonanno family wiretaps (although you can also hear them on Youtube for free).

Anyone read "Iced - The Story of organized crime in Canada" ? I don't read much about it on forums and I'm under the impression it's an overlooked book.

I've read some pages of it with google books, and I think it's a true masterpiece. The authors of Mafia Inc. used it as a source for their own book, and Mafia Inc. is a really fine book, so that says a lot.

Has anyone read this book? :



Boardwalk Gangster: The Real Lucky Luciano
by Doug Bentin on

As the old-school strippers tell a young Rose Louise Hovick in GYPSY, “You gotta have a gimmick.” A catchy name helps, too. Salvatore Lucania? Nope. Charles Luciano? Nuh-uh. Lucky Luciano? “Lucky” because he once took a three-layered ass-kicking from the cops and didn’t die. Alliterative and provocative. That’ll work.

In BOARDWALK GANGSTER: THE REAL LUCKY LUCIANO, you do get a sense from author Tim Newark that Luciano’s posthumous reputation needed some kind of boost. For the first half of his criminal life, he was a smart guy, rising through the mob ranks as a hitman and body guard for Joe Masseria. But by the end of the 1920s and the retirement of Johnny Torrio in Chicago, who handed the Outfit over to Al Capone, Luciano had been wooed from the old way of doing things.


His idea was to keep the profile as low as possible and work with anyone who could help you, whereas Masseria refused even to meet with Jewish gangsters like Mayer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel. So Luciano had Masseria subtracted from the equation and then took over his family.

The government couldn’t find a way to nail Luciano on murder, so they adapted the Capone-trap and went after him for lesser crimes, and in 1936, the judge in Luciano’s trial on prostitution charges cold-cocked him with a sentence of 30 to 50 years.

And this is where Newark’s book gets really interesting. When the U.S. entered World War II, Naval Intelligence became very concerned that Axis saboteurs would cause trouble along the Eastern seaboard. The mob, which controlled the dock workers, offered to keep an eye on things in return for certain small favors, one of which was to allow Luciano to return to Sicily.

A deal was struck and Lucky headed for the land of his birth. He said that that he could serve as middleman between the Allies and the locals to make the invasion of Italy less explosive. His apparent success has been the major factor in his story ever since.

But Newark claims that Luciano had little, if anything, to do with the Allies in Sicily and Italy. In fact, after he slipped off to Cuba after the war, and then got run out in 1947, he lived for the next 17 years in Sicily on the charity of his pals. He was never the kingpin of the international narcotics trade, as he has been credited with being. Authorities just claimed he was because they needed a straw man to dangle in front of the public.

After all, it was better to blame a known criminal mastermind than it was to blow the whistle on half the government officials between Italy and here. This same straw-man scam had worked during the Depression with many of the hoods of that era — Machine Gun Kelly, Ma Barker and others — and it worked again with Luciano

Newark shows us a different take on the Mafia and especially on one of its star attractions. It’s a relatively short book, built more for speed than intensity. After reading it, you may never think of big-time organized crime lords quite the same way again. —Doug Bentin

Looks great.

Mob Killer - Charles Carneglia, great book

Does anyone know if there is some way you can purchase books online in say .pdf format. I have a bad neck for looking down and reading books and feel like im missing out on all the great mob books as a result.

Ive thought about one of those amazon kindles but that would be similar just looking down.

Anyone has a nice book on the 'Ndrangheta? I want to have a book that covers the last 20 years, perhaps a little history also. Not to much detail.

I've just finished readingThe Life And Times of Lepke Buchalter: America's Most Ruthless Labor Racketeer. I would recommend this book to people interested in the rackets. 7/10

I just bought a book called "The Turkish Mafia", like the title says its about the Turkish mafia. It describes the origins and what the status is today, its fascinating to see how similair the origins are between the Italian/Sicilian mafia and the Turkish mafia. Both groups emerged in the countryside, the prisons. And both are described as men of honor, as Robin Hood characters. But in reality honor wasnt that important, and the most important imo is the close ties the Turkish mafia has with the government, also similair to the relation with the mafia in Italy. Not to mention the close co-operation between the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and Turkish drug baba's (godfathers) during the Pizza Connection. Today, the Turkish mafia works closely with the italian organizations, and control up to 80% of the heroin business in western europe. its a good read

http://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Turkish_Mafia.html?id=TjhlGgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Just finished Blood and Honor. Great book, really enjoyed it. Blood and Honor and Murder Machine are probably the two best Mafia books I've read.

check out Selywn Raab's Five Families next, if possible. In any case, George Anastasia always seems to write a good book IMO.



Sounds quite interesting Muk. Authored by Frank Bovenkerk and Yücel Yesilgöz? Ill have to Google that shit, see if their reporters or investigators or insiders or what.

Most of that info regarding the PIzza Connect (and to a further extent, the French one) only mentions that the gear was being refined in Turkey, then passed on to the Sicilian (and formally Corsican) dealers. It always omits the Turkish role in the scheme beyond that. It'd be interesting to learn more about the Turkish figures involved in that end of the operation, Ill have to check it out.

I'll have to find it on another page than the Dutch one you linked to though

That stuff is like double coded Pig Latin cypher. Sprackin z3e Dck?



Help me out here Sonny, what mensen the gen?

Heres a better link:
http://www.milobooks.co.uk/?p=productsMore&iProduct=54
check that out, supposedly the Turkish mafia controls the import of heroin into the low countries.

And so far in the book, the author tries to explain the family structure, he is basing it on the Cosa Nostra.
We in Turkey use the term "Baba" which means father, it means the same as godfather, but since there isnt any baptism in islam they only use Baba. The Turks were also under the influence of the Godfather movie, some even had nicknames like Pacino and one Turkish gangster was called Marlon, reference to Marlon Brando.

atm im reading mafia inc. this is a really interestong detailed book!

I am gonna read the way of a wiseguy I've read a little about it and so far very interesting. Oh, it's even written by Joeseph Pistone aka Donnie Brasco. Somebody got something to say about it?

Partial review I wrote..

There was one instance where Pistone was working with his mob mentor Lefty to close a deal with a corrupt bank exec. The exec got scared and backed out. The exec told Lefty that he was scared of "Donnie's killer eyes". Pistone was impressed, relieved and miffed that his acting was so good. Lefty had been involved in over twenty murders and evidently didn't scare the executive as much as an FBI agent pretending to be a mobster.

The book is a short (200 page) but revealing and to the point discussion of how wiseguys differ from normal people. Pistone explains Mafia protocol, how wiseguys make their money, why wiseguys aren't nice people, their typical day, why you should never ever ever let a wiseguy do you a favor, what their hierarchy is, how wiseguys relate to women and other such questions you may have. The book also has some CD transcripts of discussions between "Donnie Brasco" and Lefty in which Lefty had noticed some inconsistencies in what "Donnie" had done and was trying to determine if this might lead to "Donnie's" murder or, more importantly from Lefty's POV, his own.

Check out the top of this page of the thread. Daco asked about it.

I just received the Mafia book of the Bureau of Narcotics, its a must buy for every mafia fan. Very nice pictures of mobsters all over the country.

I saw this at a used bookstore. Has anyone else heard of it or know if it's any good?

Currently reading, 'King of the Godfathers: Joseph Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family", and have really enjoyed it so far. Well written, concise, and very informative. Great background on the Bonanno Family and the events leading to Massino's reign.

^^^awesome book!

I've read that also, was a decent read..

yh that was a good book. also reading boss of bosses how one man saved the sicilian mafia

hey guys whuts up?!can some1 pls tell me where i can find some e books about the mob?
cheers