Customer Reviews

A Man of Honor

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Mr. Bonanno provides an insider's view of organized crime - particularly the variety imported from Sicily - in the United States. It is a subject on which he is a unique authority as the longtime head of one of the country's major crime "families" and a Castellamarese Sicilian immigrant. He also enlightens readers somewhat with regard to what he perceives to be Sicilian traditions and the concept of "honor."

Of course, Mr. Bonanno does not illuminate much of his own involvement in illegal enterprises, which is certainly extensive. The reader is forced to assume that the criminal activities described in great detail are ones Mr. Bonanno oversaw himself. A great many recognizable names are mentioned, but the boss took care not to seriously offend anyone who was still alive and kicking at the time the book was published.

The book reaches back into the author's personal history from about the dawn of the 20th Century (some family history predates that) and the history of organized crime since the bootlegger wars of the Prohibition days. It advances into more modern times, though the recent information becomes sketchy.

As a first-hand account by a "don," this is a must-read for those deeply interested in the history of the American "Mafia." But it may disappoint more casual readers. And some may find objectionable the author's insistence that his criminal activity has been "honorable," his often sexist and racist views and his tendency to flatter himself (a tendency that was apparently passed on to his son, who also wrote a glowing autobiographical account of his work in the "family").

An excellent book on what a Man of Honor is really about. The clash of old world tradition and the world of new American vaules can be readily seen here. You come to appreciate the values born in Sicily to these family men. The reasons this kind of man followed those values and the way in which he managed his American Family. This is a very refreshing change from the normal MOB/Mafia books that have been published previously. A must read for those was really want to understand of the true meaning of a Man of Honor.

Are you tired of reading books written by the FBI /or DEA? Get this autobiography written by the boss himself. Many details, many photos just great. Be careful, some information might not be correct (Joe was not stupid and wrote stuff that could have caused trouble!!!)

I've read a fair number of books on the Mothers And Fathers Italian Association including Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese, and Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story by Bill Bonanno, but this is the first book of its type that's actually imparted a kind of logic to Mafioso thinking.

Joseph (Peppino) Bonanno was a Godfather of the Old School, and he may actually have BEEN the Godfather that Mario Puzo based his Godfather on in The Godfather.

In these pages, the college-educated, literate and thoughtful Bonanno comes across as a man of erudition, a man who consciously CHOSE to uphold the traditions of the Sicilian Vespers, traditions of Family and Honor, Loyalty and Silence. It's ironic that he chooses to speak in these pages, but having read him, this reviewer could understand him (somewhat); at least his belief system is not so utterly alien to this reader.

Is A MAN OF HONOR candid? Yes and no. Bonanno certainly evades some subjects, particularly those that could get him indicted by the law or killed by his rivals. He'd be a fool to speak on those, and this man is no fool, and certainly not Joe Valachi, in any case. This is not a confessional book. Leaving aside his choice to stay silent on certain subject matter, Bonanno does explain things as he sees them.

Sicily has been conquered and occupied by virtually everyone else who ever had a maritime interest in the Mediterranean (that IS everyone else). As a result, there are brunette Sicilians, blond Sicilians, redheaded Sicilians, white Sicilians, black Sicilians, and every shade in-between Sicilians. There are Sicilian hill-folk, Sicilian plainsmen, Sicilian townsmen, Sicilian country-dwellers. There are Sicilian farmers, Sicilian fishermen, Sicilian cattlemen, Sicilian sheep ranchers, Sicilian fruit farmers and Sicilian grain merchants. Each group often spoke its own dialect. This smallish island is a palimpsest of peoples moving through history.

Since Sicily was so often subjugated, the locals learned not to trust the occupiers who most often exploited or abused them. Even the eventual Italian government in Rome was alien to the island and tried to force its ways upon the islanders.

This made Sicilians dour and closemouted (except amongst friends), hotheaded and prone to violence (most often between strangers). (f)amily was the basis of everything. The numerosity of Sicilian children meant that families intermarried widely with other families, and these interlinked families became clans. Internecine generational warfare between clans (a la the Hatfields and the McCoys) was not uncommon. Neither were cross-generational alliances. As close friendships formed and friends became accepted members of these clans, they slowly transmogrified into the (F)amilies we understand today. These Families were, in their inception, actual families.

According to Bonanno, the admittedly legendary beginnings of the Mafia date back to the 1300s, when local Sicilians took up cudgels against a French occupier who had raped a village girl; her distraught mother ran through the streets shouting, "Ma fia! Ma fia!, My daughter! My daughter!"

"Ma fia!" soon became a Sicilian acronym, MAFIA, for what translates roughly as "Down With France, Up With Italy!" Even Bonanno doesn't quite buy this story, and he says so; he's almost certainly correct, for no other reason than that "Italia" didn't exist as such until the late Nineteenth Century.

The Mafia functioned as a shadow government in which "connections" meant everything, and, given the vagaries of human nature, ability rather less. The shadow government could supply employment, bribe officialdom, and mete out justice (rough and otherwise) to the population. It worked in Sicily, paternalistically, and often at a high cost in blood and treasure, but it did work in place of the often brutal rulership; when the Sicilians came to America, the Mafia came with them.

Bonanno revers the Traditions of his ancestors, and in more than one place decries their erosion in America. He's both right and wrong. In a pure democracy, the Mafia would become as useful as an inflamed appendix, but in a less-than-pure democracy it had a place. And so it did. In a sense, it functioned similarly to the homegrown landsmenschaften of the Jews or the Benevolent Associations of the Irish, but having been an outlaw group from its beginnings it remained an outlaw group.

It is important to realize that most Italian immigrants shied away from the Mafia and created democratic law-abiding support organizations like their non-Italian neighbors did. Still, a hard core of Family-oriented people remained and still remain.

The Italian immigrant influx of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was spurred by the rise of Fascism, and the newly-arrived Family-oriented immigrants (like Bonanno) found a niche in the illegal but widely tolerated practice of bootlegging. Having subverted Prohibition, the Families moved into other illegal enterprises like loan sharking and extortion. At the same time, they continued their old warfare. The Castellammarese War of the 1930s was brutal and caused tremendous attrition, but it did lead to the organization of the Families in the way most Americans are familiar with them today, structured to ensure peace (mostly) amongst themselves.

Even as the Families organized and grew and gained influence in America they began to die, says Bonanno. In retrospect, the Castellammarese War was a first death knell, as due to attrition by death, "men not of our Tradition," non-Sicilian Italians (like Joe Valachi, a Neapolitan, Bonanno points out with a sniff), and others (Jewish mobsters like Meyer Lansky) were permitted to serve the Families (they were never to be considered as full Family members, but they soon outnumbered the Sicilians themselves). The openness of American society broke down the centuries-old omerta. Children married non-Sicilians. Papas lost their life and death veto power. The concept of Mob "Bosses" replaced that of Family "Fathers," with a corresponding decline in unanimity. Pure greed and moneymaking replaced the wielding of influence and the wages of respect as primary motivations for the Families. Lucky Luciano (or "Charlie Lucky" as Bonanno calls him) became the prototype for this new American Mafioso. Competition-based killings between and even within Families gutted them out. Even the children most inculcated into the Tradition failed to grasp it fully (visit my review of Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story) for my take on this point.

It's when speaking of the Tradition and of its rise and fall that Bonanno speaks most clearly. Sometimes, he's downright funny, as when he describes his attempts to win over his explosive would-be father-in-law. Other times, he's much less endearing, as when he admits his glee at an enemy's death.

He's also got the world's best poker face. He describes the Family as a self-contained mutual support society of doctors, lawyers, small businessmen, laborers, tradesmen and their wives and children, essentially harmless. Illicit activities like bookmaking are waved off with, "That's not considered a crime in our world." He claims to have banned traffic in women and in narcotics from his Family, but "If a man wanted to go into business with someone outside of our world that was his decision," a statement which covers a multitude of literal sins. He claims never to have taken graft (probably true; why would HE need to be paid off?). He claims never to have accepted a penny for his role as Father to the Family, "but if people wanted to show their respect with a gift of money, how could I disrespect their good intentions?" and he admits to receiving free services and products as a sign of respect. The fact that this respect often contained a good-sized dollop of fear doesn't seem to occur to him, or at least he never admits it. He plays up his legal business connections, all the while saying that he accepted stock or an officership in these various companies because the owners "wanted" him for a partner. In what might be laughable, he describes strong-arm men as "the lowest of the low of our world." He never denies using their services, though. All in all, I'm sure I would have liked the man, but I wouldn't have trusted him as far as he could throw me.

Joseph Bonanno was a career criminal. Yes, he undercut the larger society with vice and drugs; and no, he does not apologize. In his non-apology I grasped a simple kernel of truth, and that is that a crime is only a crime if it is recognized as a crime. A hit man can sleep at night only because, as a Family "soldier" he does what soldiers have always done---killed their enemies in war. The Family-endorsed gratuitous violence that goes along with this is meant as a warning to others of the same Tradition.

Let me hasten to add that I am not excusing murder and mayhem, but saying that murder and mayhem exist only in the absence of sanction. It is when two different social groups like gangsters and lawmen collide, or if a soldier exceeds his sanction, or if a person acts on his own to kill without sanction, that the question of the validity of sanction arises. The armed soldiery of any nation is not generally classed as a group of murderers, but remove sanction and recognition of sanction by one's self and others, and we are left with our Lieutenant Calleys and Reinhardt Heydrichs, our Charles Whitmans, our Osama bin Ladens, and our Mafia contract killers. Perhaps that's why assassination is often referred to as "sanction."

Rationalize that gambling, liquor, and women and drugs are "what the people want," and the criminal aspect of vice becomes just a behavioral control mechanism of an authority to be disregarded. We accept only the sanctions we are prepared to accept. We ignore the sanction we are programmed to ignore. Ignore it, just as it was ignored by Joseph Bonanno, literate and intelligent though he obviously was.

In a world comprised of men like himself, Bonanno was no criminal; but by living in 20th Century America, he was perforce subject to its values, not just his own. That's this Man of Honor's blind spot.

Yes, it was "cosa nostra" it was "Our Thing" for Men of Tradition like Bonanno, but regardless, even understanding it, it does not make it, in practice, one whit less ugly than it really was.

Of course, he doesn't tell about the times he had to order that someone be "whacked." But he does go deeper than any other "Mafia memoirs" such as _The Valachi Papers_ ever did.

Or did he? Towards the end, I began wondering if, in his effort to portray himself merely as a misunderstood Sicilian businessman, his book proved that Mario Puzo had done extensive research for _The Godfather_, or if Bonanno had simply used that saga to explain the Mafia's history.

Either way, it's very readable, and very entertaining.

The book is well written and very interesting. But it seems to sugarcoat the "mafiaoso" world. Where are the stories of violence that the "Tradition" is known for? Incidents like cutting off ears and fingers, horseheads in beds, general thievery and intimidation. Is all that just Hollywood embellishment or did Mr. Bonanno perfer to leave the
unsavory side of Mafia life out of his book?

This title was fun to read. Mr. Bonanno was definitely an interesting individual. Really! But, there is something missing. Though I doubt that the government's prosecutorial attempts were all clean, I do think Mr. Bonanno sugarcoated his autobiography and left out his true criminal side. I know I couldn't write a biography about being a man of honor and Mr. Bonanno's attempt to convince Americans that he's an ordinary man just interested in doing business is full of holes. No one wants to read about an ordinary man doing business legally....generally.

The book was a decent read but I found Bonanno to be quit repeatative at times. He goes on and on about the Sicilian way of life, and how American's more or less don't understand it. Furthermore he tiptoes around all violence that comes with being in the "Family" as he so eloquently puts it. I found it to be a little dry, not so "tell all", and in the end I find Mr. Bonanno using his Sicilian background and way of life as justification for being in organized crime. Although he himself would never admit that the "Family" he was apart of was organized crime, the crux of the book. He calls himself a "Man of Honor" yet he admitly cheats on his wife and lived a life ingrossed in organized crime, hypocritical to say the least.

Ok, This book is an interesting read and you will gain some knowledge about the Mafia, its origins, the Bonanno family, etc. However, reading this book and believing everything in it would be a mistake. Bonanno loved himself and it seems the purpose of this book was to pay tribute to what he loved most (himself). It is not honest. In every account he comes out as being "honorable". However, it doesn't go into full detail about his "family" dealing drugs, on how stupid he was trying to conspire to kill other Mafia bosses "such as Gambino" and barely escaped New York with is life. If he was so smart then how did he end up like he did? Bottom line, its a great book if you want to get a sense of how dillusional and egotistical the man was and also garner some Mafia history on the side. I recommend the book, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires for anyone that is craving more information (factual) on the beginnings of the Mafia in America.

Who you lookin' at? That's as Italian De Niro can get. Expect the same kind of flavour when reading this book and then add some extra hot sauce.

You have to be aware this book was written by a mobster who considered himself a man of honor. What you think of the world is the way you are raised and how you live your life.

This book shows a great deal of information about the way of Sicilian life in the early 1900's and the booze-jammed 20's and 30's in the U.S. To read about that is fun alone, but reading about mobsters and their organization is even more exciting. This is a personal story, told by the man who reigned over Italian America for a great deal of time.

Ofcourse, Bonanno has nothing to do with leading all organized crime he tells us. But you know how Italians like food, so add a pinch of salt to this book.