Product Description

"Reppetto's book earns its place among the best . . . he brings fresh context to a familiar story worth retelling." —The New York Times Book Review

Organized crime—the Italian American kind—has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise—from the 1880s to the post-WWII era—that is as exciting and readable as it is authoritative.

Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia. It wasn't until the 1920s, thanks to Prohibition, that the Mafia assumed what we now consider its defining characteristics, especially its octopuslike tendency to infiltrate industry and government. At mid-century the Kefauver Commission declared the Mafia synonymous with Union Siciliana; in the 1960s the FBI finally admitted the Mafia's existence under the name La Cosa Nostra.

American Mafia is a fascinating look at America's most compelling criminal subculture from an author who is intimately acquainted with both sides of the street.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74751 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-02
• Released on: 2004-12-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780805077988
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Reppetto's history of the American Mafia, from its humble turn-of-the-century beginnings in small Italian neighborhoods to the 1950-1951 Senate's Kefauver hearings on organized crime that made the mob front-page news, seeks to set the record straight about one of America's most mysterious organizations. Though Reppetto, a former cop, acknowledges that the American Mafia was an outgrowth of the Sicilian and Neapolitan criminal guilds, he finds only a loose connection between the American Mafia and its old country counterparts. Citing the bad business practices of killers like Al Capone, Reppetto makes it clear that it was the mob's political ties, especially to the Tammany groups in Manhattan and the mayor's office in Chicago, and not murder and mayhem, that made rich men of many Italians (as well as Poles, Irishmen and Jews) who came to America with nothing. Without condoning their tactics, Reppetto makes a strong case that the men who laid the foundation for a national "syndicate" were empire builders along the lines of the Astors and Vanderbilts, and that the Mafia's decline since the 1950s is as much a reflection of the lack of new, strong mob leadership as it is a result of less political protection and a federal crackdown that stemmed from the mob's newfound notoriety. Though this book doesn't answer every question about the Mafia in America, it does present a thought-provoking depiction of the mob devoid of the sensationalism prevalent in many other portrayals.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
In the eighteen-eighties, the legendary New York police detective Thomas Byrnes outlined a simple solution to the mafia problem: "Let them kill each other." For Reppetto, such a view reflects dangerous illusions about the mob's foreignness and insularity. Immigrants didn't import organized crime, he writes; "they found it here when they arrived." If Italians bested other ethnic groups, it was because they were, in this respect, the better assimilationists. His clear-eyed study portrays a Mafia that managed to be both national in scope and—despite investigators' hunt for an elusive "Mr. Big"—surprisingly decentralized. Reppetto covers the usual suspects, like Luciano and Capone, but is particularly fascinated by the intersection of mob life with the establishment. He believes that the Mob boss Frank Costello uttered a basic truth about his business when, in 1951, he told the Kefauver committee, "I love this country."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From The Washington Post

I doubt that the corporate rogues who fill our headlines today will leave footprints in the sands of crime that are worth going back to inspect 50 years from now. They just aren't as colorful as the Mafia entrepreneurs Thomas Reppetto reintroduces in his new book, American Mafia. The mob was the scum of America's melting pot, with little education and no moral code. But as Reppetto points out, its members had a kind of tribal code and enough moxie that by the end of the 1930s, with their best years lying ahead, the dozen leaders of the national crime syndicate were very rich, were welcome in much of what passed for high society and had considerable influence in politics and commerce.

Of course, they ordered many hundreds of murders and controlled most of the illegal gambling, prostitution and bootlegging in the country. But sometimes, in their darkly creative moments, they shaped society more openly. Who, in the 1940s, picked William O'Dwyer to be mayor of New York, made Frank Sinatra the nation's most popular entertainer, dominated Cuba's administration and founded modern Las Vegas? The Mafia's top dogs, that's who.

We begin this sinister and bloody sewer tour toward the end of the next-to-last century, but it really gets interesting in the 1920s. Our good guide, Reppetto, gained his smarts as a Chicago commander of detectives and the longtime president of New York City's Citizen Crime Commission. Be prepared for an absolute deluge of evil, and killers with nicknames like "The Enforcer" and "Cherry Nose."

Along the way, you get a kind of underworld social register. Chicago's mobsters weren't as classy as New York's. Al Capone was just a rich thug who sometimes murdered with a baseball bat. New York had such "chic" mobsters as Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, who lived like a prince, and Arnold Rothstein, who -- from his table at Lindy's, the Broadway in-spot noted for its cheesecake -- ruled a world of crime until executed for failing to pay a $300,000 gambling debt.

Although Frank Costello scored a miserable 97 on a prison IQ test, he was shrewd enough to be considered the most important crime figure in America in the late 1940s. He told congressional investigators, "I love this country." All mobsters should have loved it, says Reppetto. "At the beginning of the 1920s they were petty hoodlums confined to ethnic colonies in the big cities. Now they controlled an empire."

To get that control, they simply bought police and politicians. In Chicago it cost them probably $20 million annually. In one 15-year stretch, the city had 765 gangland murders, but police were too busy counting their bribes to pay much attention.

During Prohibition, Fiorello LaGuardia, one of the few honest politicians Reppetto mentions, "estimated it would take 250,000 cops to enforce the law in New York city and another 250,000 to police the police." When rum runners dropped off their hooch on a Long Island beach, friendly cops would be there to protect it.

By the 1930s, Italians, such as "Lucky" Luciano, ran most of the big gangs nationwide. But there were some important Jews, such as Rothstein, Meyer Lansky and "Dutch" Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer, he took his nom de guerre from an old boxer).

Lucky, Dutch and Thomas E. Dewey, the celebrated New York district attorney, were central to what I consider the most exciting drama in the book. Dewey, politically ambitious, wanted to take down one of the biggest bosses, so he targeted Schultz. But Dewey lost the first court battle, and before he could try again, Schultz was murdered in a wonderfully gory intergang shootout. As for why it took place, Reppetto's own theory conflicts with a fascinating legend, but all agree Luciano had helped set it up. That was a mistake, for now he became Dewey's target.

Which brings us to the way justice could stack a deck. Sure, Luciano deserved prison for all sorts of major crimes, including murder. But Dewey couldn't prove the heavyweight stuff, so he got Luciano convicted of pimping, of all things, and Lucky had to move from his ritzy Waldorf penthouse to New York's bleakest prison, supposedly to stay for an incredible 30 to 50 years. He stayed 10 years, at which time he was pardoned by then-Gov. Dewey -- on the condition that he be deported to Italy (although he snuck back in again) -- who offered an excuse for his compassion that was as contrived as the pimping charges.

Dewey isn't the only one Reppetto leaves you wondering about. There's also Harry Truman, political protégé of another sort of mobster, J. Edgar Hoover, who seemed blind to the Mafia, plus other leaders who were too cozy with, or indifferent to, "the boys."

Reviewed by Robert Sherrill

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Needed more focus or more research
I feel the same way about "American Mafia : A History of Its Rise to Power" as I did about Reppetto's other book "NYPD" (co-authored by James Lardner): while I found it interesting and well-written, I felt that it left too many gaps and that some of the areas covered were not covered enough. And like NYPD, the book seemed more like a collection of mob anecdotes than an investigation into the "History of Its Rise to Power". Reppetto is to be admired for trying to tackle such a long history, and to be fair, much of it is told in an engaging style. But it seems like too broad a subject, for any writer.

Perhaps if he had just focused on the early mob history, or the history of its real organizing in the 30s and 40s, or the history of its bold, brash decades of the 50s and 60s, he would have forced himself to be more focused and selective. Instead, the book feels watered down. On a positive note, as the other reviewers have mentioned, there is no glamorizing these criminals. They are often portrayed as the vicious and psychopathic parasites they were. The key role that Prohibition played is the strong point of this book, and Reppetto does a fantastic job on discussing that.

One last note, this book, like others, fails to emphasize one thing: the Italians did not invent organized crime. The New York neighborhood known as the Five Points was rife with gangs of Irish immigrants, and they, like the mob, worked hand-in-hand with the politicians and judges that were owned by the Democratic political machine known as Tammany Hall. Later, a generation of Jewish immigrants, with names like Zelig, Buchalter, and Rothstein would dominate the crime scene. Reppetto does an okay job of covering these issues, something other mob "historians" neglect. But the reasons WHY the Italian mob became so famous is sort of glossed over. Besides their extreme viciousness, there are two reasons that made the Italian crime world so famous that people think it was the only criminal organization: (1) it existed during an era of mass communication, like movies and radio, so their every atrocity was announced nationwide and it provided fascinating characters for movies; and (2) because it existed in a world of expanding personal communications (i.e., telephones) they could conduct their "business" more effectively and instantly, and keep things organized. Perhaps if Reppetto were to focus just on these elements of the Mafia, we would really have a true look at its rise to power.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points

Good overview of the Mafia, though lacking depth
For anyone wishing an introduction to Mafia history in the United States this book is an excellent primer. Reppetto traces the rise of the American Mafia from late 19th century New Orleans to the heyday, just before the U.S. government started paying organized crime their due in attention and resources in the early '60's.
We are introduced to various luminaries of the underworld, their crimes and their fates (not surprisingly usually a violent death, exile or a prison cell). Reppetto's section on Lucky Luciano is particularly good.
Readers already familiar with the Mafia will find little new here. The book certainly doesn't rival Gus Russo's seminal book from 2002, "The Outfit" which provides far more depth, representing infinitely more research and scholarship.
Reppetto is unflinching in his exposure of police corruption in U.S. cities far and wide, but fails to put organized crime in its proper place within the tangled web they weaved within corporate America and the government. He also portrays far too flattering a portrait of J. Edgar Hoover, glossing over his motives for not pursuing the Mafia more aggressively.
It is as an intro to the Mafia for new readers that I give "American Mafia..." four stars, assuming they to be the book's primary audience. Those more familiar with the Mafia should be directed to Russo's book and others such as ones on Al Capone, Sam Giancanna, Meyer Lanksy and Arnold Rothstein.

The Infamous Shady Characters Are All Here
Author Thomas Reppetto has provided us with an interesting history on the rise of the mafia in America, and the reasons for its demise from its once lofty perch. The man behind its beginnings was Johnny Torrio who transferred his operations from New York to Chicago in the early 1920's. The book concentrates mainly on the New York and Chicago areas, but does include Las Vegas and other areas as well. Certain thugs were removed from the scene due to various reasons such as Jim Colosimo who didn't adjust to the times (prohibition), Dion O'Bannion due to cheating on a business deal, Al Capone and Owney Madden due to bad publicity, Dutch Schultz due to reckless behavior, and others due to various mistakes such as maintaining a high profile. J. Edgar Hoover of the F.B.I. ignored any investigation of the mafia. Instead he concentrated on two bit hoodlums such as "Pretty Boy" Floyd, "Baby Face" Nelson, and John Dillinger who robbed banks during the 1930's. The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of the mafia while the second half of the century saw its fall. The Kefauver Committee began investigating organized crime in 1950 and the advent of television in urban areas brought interviews with mobsters such as Frank Costello to the forefront of the public. Although mobsters can find new fields in which to operate, today's organized crime is a shadow of what it once was. This book brings the names of the infamous back to life from the time of the beginnings of the 1920's through the removal of the New York mobsters in the 1980's. Even if you are familiar with the names of Luciano, Rothstein, Genovese, Giancana, and others you will find this a very interesting book to read. I would highly recommend it to you.