Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story [Paperback]

Bill Bonanno (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1999

No one can tell the true story of the Mafia in America better than Bill Bonanno. He was there. He lived it.

Bill Bonanno was born into a world of respect, tradition, and honor. The son of legendary mafioso Joe Bonanno, Bill was a "made" member of the Mafia by the time he was in his early twenties. He was rumored to be the model for The Godfather's Michael Corleone and was the subject of Gay Talese's best-selling Honor Thy Father.

Now retired, Bill is finally ready to give an eyewitness account of his life as a high-ranking captain in the Bonanno crime family, one of America's most powerful Mafia syndicates. He takes you inside the mob at its peak, when New York's Five Families-Bonanno, Gambino, Colombo, Lucchese, and Genovese-not only dominated local businesses, but also controlled national politics. For the first time, Bill Bonanno discloses the machinations behind his marriage to Rosalie Profaci (niece of the powerful don Joe Profaci), and even that cemented the alliance between the two Families with all the pomp and circumstance of a royal wedding. From the truth about the mysterious disappearance of his father to a startling disclosure about he mob's participation in the Kennedy assassination, Bill Bonanno lays bare the inner workings of his chaotic, violent, and surprisingly human world with unparalleled detail and insight.

Bound By Honor not only recounts Bill Bonanno's tumultuous life, but also is an engrossing chronicle of organized crime. Bonanno's story provides a remarkable glimpse into all of the intriguing personalities of the underworld of yesterday to today, from Bugsy Siegel to John Gotti.

This book is a must for readers of Mario Puzo, Gay Talese, Nicholas Pileggi, and others who have written abut the Mafia, but who have never been in the eye of the storm in quite the same way as Bill Bonanno in Bound By Honor.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bill Bonanno could be just another 66-year-old retiree, gone to Tucson, Arizona, to live out his remaining years in a hospitable climate. But he's not. "I come from a long line of Mafiosi," he informs us, taking pains to establish the difference between Mafiosi, a term "rooted in the character and the values of the men and women who were the everyday makers of Sicilian history," and the fictional Mafia. (Bonanno knows from crime fiction: there are those who say that he's the real-life model for Michael Corleone, and he does not deny it.) Bound by Honor is as much a family saga as it is a true crime story, and Bonanno's insightful self-reflection guarantees a distinctive degree of honesty and depth.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1964, hijackers working the New Jersey Turnpike were baffled when they ended up with a truckload of right-footed sneakers. The manufacturers figured they could frustrate the thieves by shipping half pairs of shoesAbut the enterprising crooks started nabbing twice as many trucks and repacking the matched footgear in a mob warehouse. Unfortunately, this is one of the few colorful stories in the book, which is big on bluster and short on substance. Bonanno must have hundreds of chewy anecdotes, yet his only apparent goal is to exalt the world of his father, mob boss Joseph Bonanno (referred to repeatedly and without a scintilla of irony as "the Angel of Peace"), whose noble, European-style family opposed the drugs and prostitution championed by upstart Americanized mafiosi. His memoir will attract some interest because it claims to reveal the identity of the "real" JFK assassin, a hit man named Johnny Roselli who, by claiming to have fired from a storm drain on Elm Street, qualifies for membership in an alumni association now numerous enough to fill Dealey Plaza. Such overblown claims are just part of a bloviating style windy with references to "our tradition" and "our world," phrases that would have struck a more resonant chord in the mid-70s, when Mario Puzo's books and Francis Ford Coppola's movies introduced the country to the peculiar mix of honor and violence that Bonanno crudely celebrates. Photos. $100,000 ad/promo; audio rights to Simon & Schuster; author tour. (May) FYI: Bonanno is said to have inspired the character of Michael Corleone and was the subject of Gay Talese's Honor Thy Father. A 60 Minutes segment will air near pub date, and a Showtime miniseries is planned.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (April 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312203888
• ISBN-13: 978-0312203887
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,507,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get ready for this!, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story (Paperback)

Who killed JFK? The CIA? FBI? Secret Service? Cubans? The Mafia? Bill Bonanno details the answer to that question and much more in the book Bound By Honor. Bonanno's accounts of what goes on t in the mafia are a first hand look into a world that has been kept secret for a very long time.

Bonanno is able to give the reader a true taste of life in the Underworld, but it lacks any real substance. Bonanno has an insight into this life style and ruler of a powerful crime family, but he only touches the surface. Bonanno was very distance in his approached to relating the facts.

I was surprised at several of the stories Bonanno relates in this book, however I was left a little unsure of the message. While Bonanno may want the reader to think that he has blown the lid off of the mafia, the reader will find that some of the "facts" cannot be corroborated.

An interesting read for almost any taste, and you should be able to walk away with the feeling that your money was well spent. I believe that if the author spent more time detailing some of the facts, the book would have been a true bestseller.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reading for students of 20th century America, September 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story (Paperback)

I found this book to be informative without being gawdy and violently graphic. How refreshing! The Don did a great job for an ex-wise guy who was born into a tradition of big time crime and back alley violence. I suspected for years that Puzo used the Bonanno Patriarch as the model for "Don Corleone". It only makes sense that his son Bill was the inspiration for "Michael". Which brings me to my next point: Bill Bonanno is a college educated, former organized crime figure after the finest tradition of that phrase, if there is such a thing. To have written his manuscript as well as he did, without much editing is to the book's benefit as well as the reader's. I personally despise books of this type that are pumped full of hype. This book skips the hype and simply tells a man's life story that was, for good or ill, a signifigant part of our culture through most of this century. Great reading for any student of New York's "five families" and must reading for students of 20th century American History & Sociology. As for Bill Bonanno, may he and his family live out the remainder of their lives in peace and happiness.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't Miss the Point, June 24, 2003

By 

James Hercules Sutton (Des Moines, IA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story (Paperback)

This book isn't about crime; it's about a broken heart. Like Michael Corleone, what Bonanno did to preserve his family destroyed it; like Corleone, once he got involved, he couldn't get out. This explains his fatalistic feeling that his role in life was preordained at birth.

Contrary to other reviews here, Bonanno DOES give new details, like why Bugsy Seigal was killed and who the second shooter was in Dallas. His explanation of who killed the Kennedys and why is worth the price of the book. He shouldn't be expected to give details about his own capers, not only because this would be self-incriminating, but because he was a strategist, not a soldier or capo. He's a policy wonk of crime.

He says the U.S. Government is the biggest mob around. If true, this not only justifies why Sicilians are as they are, but burdens the rest of us with a warning. Even if false, it indavertently supports his point that "the life" came to an end when those practicing it entered into a war of attrition with a foe more capable of maintaining it. Maybe greed wasn't to blame; maybe it was hubris.

Even if the book is self-serving or written for profit, that it exists is omerta's epitaph. It demonstrates that action for its own sake can be as addictive as heroin and harder to shake. It restates two great truths--"whatever is taken by force must be maintained by force" and "force feeds on force." It also proves that two cultures can't exist in the same place at the same time; one absorbs the other or eliminates it. A war between the Mafia and America could end in only one way. Bonanno says that his father knew this; I believe him.