All-American Mafioso: The Johnny Roselli Story [Hardcover]

Charles Rappleye (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rosselli, brought to this country from Italy as a child, was a key figure in organized crime for decades until he was murdered in 1976. Los Angeles freelance journalist Rappleye and private eye Becker trace the rise of this gangster who began his career working for Al Capone, moved to Hollywood at a time when the mob was making inroads into the film industry, switched his residence to Las Vegas when the first Cosa Nostra-financed casinos were built, and played a major role in the CIA's abortive attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. The book draws a deeply depressing picture of American life with its contention that many important figures in business and politics are beholden to the Mafia, including John Kennedy, who, the authors suggest, was killed by the mob. The biography will be much discussed. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Born Filippo Sacco in Italy, Rosselli's long Mafia career ended in 1976 when he was slain following his Senate testimony about his role in the CIA-Mafia plot to kill Fidel Castro. In between, Rosselli, who started with the Capone mob, was most active in Hollywood and Las Vegas. The authors rather admire their subject, and he is portayed as a principled, patriotic, and gentlemanly mobster. Despite extensive research, the book lacks an authoritative source, and Rosselli and his exploits remain shadowy and not fully realized. Of necessity, there is an abundance of speculation, some well-informed and some dubious. Although a bit lacking in drama and immediacy for the general reader, this book has historical value. Suitable for larger crime collections.
-Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 380 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (August 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385266766
• ISBN-13: 978-0385266765
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #921,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Rappleye is a writer and editor who has lived in Los Angeles since 1984. In 1986 he left off a career in journalism to pursue longer-form projects, a step that led to a writing degree from USC and his first book. "All-American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story" was published to strong reviews in 1991. After a stretch of freelance journalism Rappleye in 1994 returned to gainful employment with a staff job at the LA Weekly. He left nine years later and in 2006 published his second book, a story from the realm of history. "Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution" was recognized as the year's best book on the founding era by the American Revolution Round Table Book Prize and the George Washington Book Prize. Rappleye returned to the Revolution for his next project, the biography of Robert Morris published in November by Simon & Schuster.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, January 6, 2008

By 

O.C. Reader "The devil is in the details." - See all my reviews

This review is from: All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story (Paperback)

ALL-AMERICAN MAFIOSO is a well-researched biography of legendary mobster Filippo Sacco, better known by his alias: John Rosselli. This book gives good insight into his obscure background and career in the underworlds from Boston to Los Angeles, and from Chicago to Havana, Cuba.

It includes a vast "Notes" section with bibliography, which is always a plus when considering the validity of a research book. Obviously, the authors give you a chance to double-check them if you desire to do so. They had access to hundreds of government documents, FBI files, police files, court documents, interviewed countless people on both side of the law, and dug up contemporary newspaper and magazine articles to insert some nastalgic filler into their pie, turning this book into a nice three-course meal in which by the end of it you are full and satisfied.

Very nicely written and well-edited. The majority of books today in the organized-crime genre are filled with typos and grammatical errors. I tend to notice them, and I noticed few, if any, in this book. Those kind of editing errors are always a turn-off for me when I read a book.

The reader will be additionally impressed with all the rare, never-before-seen photos the authors were able to obtain, one of which is a photo of Rosselli at the age of eight, which I assume they obtained when they interviewed members of Rosselli's family, such as his sister.

All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about John Rosselli and his Hollywood, government, and gangster pals; the glamorous Los Angeles movie scene of yesteryear; and the CIA/Mafia plots to assassination Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, in which Rosselli played a major part -- and this is not speculation on the part of the authors, this is a documented fact confirmed by various government officials over the years and thoroughly investigated by a congressional committee in the late 1970s.

I don't think anyone who wants to know about Johnny Rosselli, truly a gangster's gangster, will be disappointed when they finish reading this book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Eye-Opener, May 19, 2007

By 

Peter Richardson (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story (Paperback)

This book's advantage over similar titles is the sheer number of historical insights it offers about four American cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC) simply by tracing the extraordinary life of one man, racketeer Johnny Rosselli. Want to know how the Chicago mob hijacked the Hollywood union movement in the 1930s? Or how the Kennedy administration reached out to mobsters to assassinate Castro in the 1960s? You'll find the answers, and much more, in a few hundred lucid, well-researched pages. Many of the same stories appear in Gus Russo's *The Outfit* and *Supermob*, for example, but the extra detail there doesn't always pay its own way, and Russo's conclusions frequently stretch the evidence he presents. Like Russo's more exhaustive (and exhausting) work, *All American Mafioso* shows how interdependent the worlds of organized crime, business, and government could be in mid-century America. Rosselli's grisly murder--he was dismembered and stuffed into an oil drum off the Florida coast after his Senate testimony--also shows how ugly the results could be. Highly recommended.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A pile of rubbish, April 28, 2007

By 

Bookreader "Bookreader" (Waterbury Conn.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story (Paperback)

Essentially a series of newspaper clippings tossed together and called research, most of it wrong or based on speculation. Save your money