Customer Reviews

The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States

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I had to read this for a college class I took called The History of Urban Crime..This is a good book to get the general overview about the Italian Mafia...Black Hand gang was kind of a form of terrorism back then...."He is a friend of ours"...Hhehehehe....I like cover picture also...There are better, more thorough mob history books out there..But this would be a good one to start with

This book is an overview of the history of organized crime in the Italian community and gives the reader a good overview of the development of and the major players in the Mafia. While in parts it can seem like an endless list of names and crimes it does a good job of tracking the different illegal enterprises. As it turns out organized crime was not as organized as hollywood and the press would have you believe and there was qhite a bit of regional variation in what ventures were undertaken and how free the mob was to do what it pleased. Not surprisingly in most places where the Italian American community was not the dominant white ethnic group it had to work with crooked politicians, police and even other ethnic games especially the Irish and Jews. Overall this is a good overview of the Mob and for the most part does a good job of giving an account of the Mob lifestyle without glorifying it.