Customer Reviews

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The prior reviews that seem peeved that this book offers little in the way of revelations or breakthrough analysis are accurate. If you are one of the country's great experts, OK, you've heard it before; don't buy the book.

For everyone else, this is an excellent review of the New York Mafia, what they did, who did it, and the enforcement brought against them. I own over a hundred organized crime books, and this is the one I would recommend to someone looking for the best possible overview of the Five Families. It is comprehensive, factual and well-written.

This is a great book on the history of the American Mafia with some new insights on its origins and how it came to the US, also how it functioned and bled New York for 70+ years. Raab has a done a masterful job of combing through the myriad newspaper, court dcuments and sources out there and assembled a chronological narrative of each of New York's Mafia Families. It is a rivetting read, entertaining and informative. It gives new insights into the semi-legit rackets and old history like Apalachin, JFK's assassination, Luciano's war-time aid to the US, and Jimmy Hoffa. Of particulr value is how the new focus on terrorism post 9/11 may give the Mafia a chance to regroup.

However, these strengths are also its weaknesses. It focuses exclusively on New York City. It says how New York made satellites of Mafia Families in other cities but never explains how things worked in other cities or how the New York Families subjugated other mafia groups around the country. It also would have been intersting to learn how New York mafia groups related to and cooperated with families in other cities, especially Chicago. It never explains how the New York Families could run crews in other cities with active Mafia Families, like Newark and California.

Raab also relies heavily on FBI and Court transcripts, and sometimes his explaining the investigations and pursuit of the gangsters is too long and pulls the book off track. We want to learn about the Mafia and how it functions, not read a police investigative-procedural drama.

The most glaring mis-step is Raab's over-simplification and neglect of other criminal organizations, especially Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz and other Jewish gagnsters. He falls into the unsophisticated, overly simple and even anti-Semitic line of how Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz and other Jewish mobsters were merely "junior partners" and "accountants" for the Mafia. Lansky, Shapiro and others were major bootleggers and labor racketeers in their own right. They worked in conjuction and on equal footing with Luciano and Mafia gangs. Jewish and Italian gangsters during Prohibition and after formed a symbiotic partnership. Lansky never would have been as successful as he was without his partnership with Luciano, and vice versa. Lansky and Dalitz took their bootlegging profits and began building Las Vegas, Luciano and Cstello and other Mafia magnates were equal partners to be sure. The hit on Siegel almost certainly came from Lansky. Lansky and Dalitz needed no financial backing or approval from the Five Famlies. The Mafia's later success in skimming the Vegas casinos would not have been possible without the pioneering efforts of the multi-ethnic and sophisticated syndicate that emerged from prohibition.

Raab also completely ignores major bootleg/gambling syndicates such as Lansky/Siegel, Legs Daimond or Waxy Gordon in New York, Boo Boo Hoff in Philadelphia, Longy Zwillman in Newark, Moe Dalitz in Cleveland or the Purple Gang in Detroit. These syndicates needed no backing or permission from any Mafia family to operate and run successful criminal enterprises. After Prohibition, Lansky, Dalitz and others continued to engage in lucrative financial rackets, money laundering, and major casino operations in Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Switzerland and Monte Carlo into the 1970's. These sophisticated white collar crimes dwarfed the more provincial operations of extortion, loan sharking and drug pushing engaged in by most street crews of New York's Five Families. By suggesting that these Jewish criminals could only at the most serve as trusted accountats to Mafia families not only falls into worn out offensive stereotypes but also gives an inccurate picture of the true nature of organized crime.

Raab also gives short shrift to Russian, Asian and multi-national organized crime syndicates operating in the nation today. In making the Mafia the center of organized crime activities he has given a myopic picture of organized crime, past and present. Law eforcement's high profile and much touted focus on the 5 Mafia gangs has probably given these newer criminal syndicates room to grow and expand from the 1980's through today.

Raab sets out to write a history of New York's 5 Mafia Families and he succeeds in spades. His only weakness is taking the mystique of the mafia at face value and portraying them as the end-all and be-all of organized crime in New York and throughout the country.

Selwyn Raab spent his career covering organized crime and the depth of his understanding of the five families is very clear in his writing. I bought this book because I love mob movies, crime history and the Soprano's. I was hoping that it would tell the story of the US mafia and it's development trough the last century. On a factual basis, it succeeds to a large degree, but it's structure gets in the way of my being able to enjoy it. I can't tell if this is an artifact of the topic, a forced translation of newspaper reporting into book form or uneven editing. The story of the American mob is in many ways the story of relationships and rivalries. With such a large cast of characters and so much time to cover, there is bound to be a certain amount of shifting between people and places. However the organization of the book makes it feel like your reading an assembly of anecdotes rather than a coherent narrative. The chapters shift focus from family to family, repeat certain details from one chapter to the next and lacks a narrative thread to hold it all together. This is not a trivial complaint for a book that's more than 700 pages long.

If you like details, good reporting and are willing to do a little fishing around, this is a great look at the New York mafia. If you get a little impatient with shifting emphasis and weak narrative structure, look for something else.

Beginning with the Sicilian origins of the Mafia, Selwyn Raab explains how it spread from its New York origins to cities across America.

Raab, a newspaper and television reporter with more than 40 years experience covering organized crime paints a realistic portrait of the Mafia. Avoiding glamorization, the author, who spent more than 25 years as a reporter with The New York Times, exposes the Mafia as a serious threat to honest citizens.

"The collective goal of the five families of New York was the pillaging of the nation's richest city and region," he writes.

The five families--Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese--were responsible for corrupting labor unions to control waterfront commerce, garbage collection, the garment industry, and construction in New York. Later, they broadened their vistas to include the country, particularly Las Vegas, its most successful outside venture.

Since September 11, 2001, the author says, the F.B.I. has been focused mainly on external threats, the author notes. This gives it room to regain some lost turf by moving into new avenues of crime.

Exhaustive in its research and well-written, Five Families chronicles the tale of the rise and fall of New York's premier dons: Lucky Luciano, Paul Castellano and John Gotti. To carry his tale, Raab interviewed prosecutors, law enforcement officers, Mafia members, informants, and "Mob lawyers." The result: anecdotes and inside information that reveal the true story of the Mafia and its influence.

A masterpiece, this book will be considered a model of what great journalism should and can be.

Five Families provides a fact-filled chronicle of the Mafia from prior to its becoming organized in the U.S. to the present. It is not a story that wraps itself around a few main characters, as perhaps some dissatisfied reviewers were expecting. Rather Five Families chronicles the Mafia from its inception to its "heyday" through its decline and supposedly to its resurgence(although Raab spends almost no time presenting this evidence). Overall, I enjoyed Five Families for the facts it presents and was surprised by all the very negative reviews it received on Amazon. True, it is not a fast read. Nor is it much more than a chronicle of the Mafia's influence and of its members. Having read many books over the years about organized crime in the U.S, a lot of what was presented was a review of what I had read previously; but much was also new information. I was not diappointed by this and it was basically what I expected. I'm not quite sure if my 4-star rating is inflated due to my considering it to be more deserving than the many 1-star ratings it received or if I would have still given it this rating if I hadn't read any of the earlier reviews. Regardless, if you're in the mood for a book that is loaded with facts and insights into the Mafia, Five Families is a book I think you'l enjoy.

I'd give "Five Families" six or seven stars, were it possible. Having read several Mob-related books, some great, some trashy, I can say with some authority that Selwyn Raab's book is the best historical volume ever on the Mafia, and brings us up to the present.
From its start during Prohibition, the founding of "The Commission" by Lucky Luciano and later events such as the whacking of Paul Castellano and the rise and fall of John Gotti, and the travails of sinister Mob figures like Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, probably the most vicious mobster ever, and Vincent "Chin" Gigante, to whom even Gotti was deferential, "Five Families" offers a comprehensive yet never tedious look into New York's five Mob families, or "borgatas" and their successes and failures.
While attention is paid to John Gotti, Raab wisely divvies up his time evenly among the families, avoiding the overkill of Gotti stories other books have fallen prey to. His work on more recent figures is especially interesting.
We have always had a fascination with charismatic criminals, from the old days of the West with Billy The Kid, Butch Cassidy, to Al Capone, Luciano and John Gotti. It's the stuff of legend, but we must remember not to become admirers of these outlaws, as Raab points out through his details of some of their meanest and sadistic acts. Nonetheless, it's compelling and a great view into the underworld, its way of life and its prime movers and shakers. Over 700 pages long, and worth every sentence.

I really enjoyed this history of the five New York Mafia families. It is very well written. It is a very lengthy book but if you have any interest in the Mafia you will not care. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get an overview of the Mafia's history and how their "rackets" work. Saab also does an excellent job of giving the good guys (the cops and prosecutors) the attention they deserve. Usually they are merely mentioned by other authors but Saab makes them as interesting as the mafioso.

This review is admittedly, written by someone who knows absolutely nothing of the mafia, it's origins nor impact upon our country. I have, I admit, lead a sheltered life. I have difficulty comprehending the life style in the part of the country (New York, East Coast) where most of this history takes place. It is as far removed from the Ozarks as the planet Mars. That being said, I did enjoy the book, perhaps in part due to my ignorance of the subject or pure naivete. I found the book to be very informative and interesting. It was well written, easy to follow. I do agree with a couple of reviewers in that much of it is probably yesterdays news, but for someone like myself who did not follow yesterdays news, then the story was new and enlightening. I did find following the time line difficult at times and there was indeed a bit of repetitiveness here and there. Overall though, it was not a difficult read and I learned much. I suspect that for those who want more, there are probably better books out there, but that is certainly not for me to judge as I have not read any of them and quite likely never will. I will say though, that if the story between these pages is true, and I have no reason to doubt the author's research, then this is one pretty scary read. Recommend.

Selwyn Raab, one of America's premier journalists, has produced the most fact-filled and complete work on the modern-day mob ever published. Rich in detail, it shows how the mob has grown, changed, and adapted itself throughout the years. Raab also shows that the mob in America, though staggered by a series of defections and successful investigations, is far from finished. Kudos to Mr. Raab for this well-researched, highly readable, definitive guidebook to the mob.

As a crime writer based in the UK one of my first port of calls when researching a subject is the New York Times website. If I came across an article by Selwyn Raab then I knew I would have access to an informative and well written piece of research.

So, it came as no surprise that FIVE FAMILIES was an execllent read despite what some other reviewers think.

Raab's knowledge of the New York Mafia and how he imparts this to the reader is unquestionally brilliant. He has raised the stakes for future writers attempting to better this work.