Just wondering if anybody has read the below book and is it recommended..
Last Testament of Lucky Luciano by Marvin Gosch (Author), Richard Hammer (Author)
Amazon page Thanks.
It's a whitewash, DeNiro, written by an author handpicked by Luciano. But it's still interesting, in that Luciano allowed himself to be interviewed. I'd call it required reading for a mob buff for that reason alone.
I would echo what PB said. It was the first mob book I read. I picked it up in a used bookstore in college. Great stuff.
One of the interesting things is that it is very much written in Luciano's voice-which is HIGHLY profane and very low class and common-none of the flowery style which Bonnano used. Luciano was a street thug who made good and the book reads like that. The book has none of this nonsensical talk about "honor" or "destiny". Zero.
Of course like anything else there are some things that Charlie Lucky really didn't want to discuss so the book glosses over any murders he may have personally done as a hoodlum on the rise in the teens and twenties. To hear him tell it people just did what he suggested because he was a great organizer and had plenty of team spirit.
In the same vein the book is vague on his involvement in post war narcotics dealings or exactly what (if any) sorts of deals he and/or Vito Genovese may have made with OSS/CIA to spring Luciano, restore Mafia control in Sicily and make sure the "right" people won post war elections. Again, to hear Luciano tell it he constantly argued against narcotics involvement and it was all Vito's idea.
Still the book is quite interesting because again it shows that at the highest levels of the Mafia and organized crime all the stuff about Family hierarchy/separations or Italian/Jew separation isn't always the case.
Adonis, Luciano, Buchalter, Siegel, Lanksy, Genovese, and Anastasia seemed to view themselves as rough equals, with Charlie Lucky just a little more equal than the others. The book contradicts itself often but that's to be expected. Sometimes supposedly Lanksy is prevented from voting because he's Jewish but at other times the final word on something is "The Little Man said so". Go figure...
