i think you guys kind of overrate his book on this board. raab's writing style seemed pretty dry to me,and he uses a lot of unnecessary big words that no one ever uses in real life,outside of academia maybe. it's also maybe too ambitious. if i want to read a sweeping account of mob history that covers hundreds of years,i prefer something in encyclopedic form like jay Robert nash's books. it just doesn't work as well in the format of a chronology. just one man's opinion,of course. carry on
I know in my first post feeding a potential troll isn't the best of starts, but to suggest that Raab uses words that are too big is kind of ridiculous. My vocabulary isn't that expansive but at no point did I feel the need to refer to a dictionary or thesaurus
ok,i just turned to a random page in the book to see if I was correct and I saw words like
"omnibus"
"spurious"
"hob-knobbing"
sorry,but these aren't regular words people use everyday. not to pass judgment on the author,I kind of get the feeling he's not the most down to earth or street guy ever. working at the ny times for 40 years will do that.
