I have not read the second book. I have read the Russo book. I think it, as much as anything else I've read is a pretty definitive history of the Chicago Outfit from the immediate post-Capone era right up through the late sixties/early seventies.

Russo pretty much sticks to facts. Everything is meticulously documented. There's very little of Roemer's "I heard this from someone I can't identify" flights of fancy.

It lays out the business relationships and internal rivalries which characterized the Outfit. And it really gives the definitive history of Murray Humprhries, who more than any other gangster, really was a real life Tom Hagen. (albeit a more violent one)

The book shows how everything fits together-from shaking down Hollywood film studios to arranging trucking monopolies to moving in on numbers operators. The whole organization is reviewed and just as importantly its links to business leaders and politicians and front men (Sidney Korshak).

It's only at the end of the book that Russo allows himself a little revisionist babble "compared to politicians-some of these guys weren't so bad". Aside from that I can't recommend it strongly enough.