Customer Reviews

The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931 (Routledge Advances in American History)

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Meticulously documented survey, with the authors synthesis. Challenges previous interpretations. Of great value to those interested in this history.

A fascinating, complex, in-depth investigation of the origins of Italian-American organized crime in New York. This book will surely stand as the most comprehensive analysis of a period in American criminology that has long been neglected by historians of the subject, at least on a scale as exhaustive and far-reaching as this work.

Critchley's ten years of painstaking research has brought us nearer to understanding the strange and tortuous links that make up the chain connecting Italian immigration through their Diaspora west to America and the phenomena that is collectively known today as the Mafia.

Tracing its origins from the street gangs of New York led by hoodlums like Paolo Vaccarelli, through the oppressive machinations of Black Hand groups into the counterfeiting gang of Giuseppe Morello, described as the very first 'Boss of Bosses,' the book leads us through a veritable minefield of Italian names, genealogical relationships, inter-marriage connections, murders, assassination attempts and more skulduggery than anything Dan Brown or Robert Ludlam could have hoped to create in their wildest dreams.

Taking us year by year, and gang by gang, the author painstakingly recreates through his masterful research, the way in which Sicilian, and later Neapolitan and Calabria `men of honour' left their homelands and settled into a new life of law-breaking in the biggest city in America. From these early beginnings, emerged the five Mafia crime families that have dominated the city's underworld since the early 1930s.

David Critchley is to be congratulated on creating what will surely be the benchmark for any future investigative writing on this subject. I sincerely hope he continues his research into the criminal world and shares it with the rest of us.

David Critchley's text represents a rare combination of social scientific precision and lively narrative. His work is both factual and entertaining.

There are a number a significant contributions to the study of crime in the text including:

*Critchley disentangles previous writers' attempts at conflating the "Black Hand" with the Mafia.

*The author deconstructs the notion that Luciano transformed the Mafia into a completely cosmopolitan syndicate. In other words, despite Luciano's open-mindedness, the Mafia retained a number of Sicilian traditions.

*Critchely uncovers a number of previously unknown connections between the Sicilian Mafia in New York and the Detroit underworld.

Critchley's new book is an outstanding contribution to the history of organized crime. Scholars will find the text to be an indispensable source for their own research.

David Critchley challenges many of the common beliefs and assumptions about
the American Mafia in this excellent book. For those readers who are interested in an academic approach to organized crime, The Origin of Organized Crime in America presents many controversial arguments and theories - all backed by critical analysis and, wherever possible, primary sources. Every chapter is heavily referenced with nearly a quarter of the book taken up with citations. A central unifying theme of law enforcement authorities exaggerating the power and influence of Italian racketeers is found in nearly every chapter as Critchley argues persuasively against many popular conceptions of the Mafia.
The content of the book is amazing. There is no other book that critically evaluates the myths and fables of the Italian Mafia in America. Critchley has delved deeply into many cherished beliefs such as the Black Hand serving as a nursery for the post-Prohibition crime families; the Purge; the Americanization of the Italian Mafia; and even the wealth of the great bosses. He has gone beyond these topics to find connections between obscure hoodlums and major crime figures. His genealogical studies have shown patterns in the composition of crime families that have frequently been overlooked or assumed without concrete evidence.
The organization is unusually for a scholarly work. The chapter arrangement is basically chronological; but each chapter is broken up into small sections that analyze minute aspects of a certain topic such as Counterfeiting ca. 1900s; Salvatore D'Aquila; and Organization of (Italian gangster) bootlegging. Most chapters include a brief historiography section; but this is just an overview. Critchley addresses previous studies as they directly pertain to the sub-sections of each chapter.
Wherever he can, he uses primary sources including first hand narratives, law enforcement documents, and other materials such as city directories. Much of the later chapters rely heavily on three narratives: Joe Bonanno, Nicolo Gentile, and Joe Valachi. All three men had their own agendas and left out certain aspects that were embarrassing to them. Several robust studies have raised doubts about the authenticity of Valachi's narrative. Critchley addresses these studies and rebuffs some of their key criticisms. However, the result is that some of the later chapters appear almost as a defense of Valachi. The fact remains that this is one of the best books written about Italian organized crime in New York. It provides valuable analysis, models, and sources for amateurs, students, and experts.

It's been a long time since I came across a book so doggedly and so originally researched. David Critchley has taken a subject that has long been sorely in need of rescuing from the massed attentions of true crime buffs and hack writers, and restored it pretty much single-handedly to academic respectability. The Origins of Organized Crime is the product of at least a decade of work in dozens of obscure archives, and the result of the painstaking cross-referencing of many thousands of fragments of information, from obscure Mafia memoirs in the original Italian to dry data painstakingly extracted from birth, death and naturalisation certificates. The completed jigsaw puzzle is the first truly reliable history of a notoriously unreliable subject - the birth and early development of Sicilian organised crime in the United States - and though Dr Critchley would no doubt be the first to admit that it is still missing many important pieces, it's also as close as we can now get to a proper understanding of what went on in America's Sicilian underworld in its first decades.

I say 'American' deliberately. The author has taken a single city - New York - and for much of the book focusses on a single family, the Morellos, but his book is far richer than that bald summary suggests. It touches on the early criminal history of several dozen other cities and the doings of many hundreds of other criminals, all meticulously referenced in nearly 80 pages of notes and all told in a sober tone. There is comparatively little narrative, and the book occasionally shifts a little abruptly from one topic to the next, but this is a minor criticism that should do nothing to undermine Crithley's achievement. What he gives us is nine clearly laid-out chapters that clearly state what is known or can be sensibly deduced from a most fragmentary record.

Speculation, where it occurs, is clearly labelled as such, but for the most part the author sticks firmly to such facts as can be established. In doing so, he takes a far deeper look at the early history of the Mafia than any of his predecessors. Most other books on this topic chronicle little but endless streams of murders, and do little or nothing to place even these events in context or explain their wider meaning or implications. This book, in stark contrast, is the sort that explores the inter-relationship between shareholders in lathing companies, and it's all the better for it.

Dr Critchley opens his book with the arrival of the earliest documented Mafiosi in New York and ends it with a look at how the fraternity emerged in more or less its famous form during the 1930s. Along the way he sets to rest any number of potent, well-established myths. Did the Mafia and the Camorra fight a 28-year battle for supremacy in New York, as David Chandler supposed? Critchley establishes that the conflict lasted for about five months, with at most half-a-dozen casualties. Was the infamous Castellammare War of 1930-31 really responsible for the extermination of an older generation of 'Mustache Petes' by Young Turks set upon the Americanisation of the Mafia? Hardly at all, as it turns out. And did Mafiosi really earn millions from organised crime? The author has scoured surviving probate records to find out.

The early Mafia that emerges from the pages of this book is neither the benevolent protector of vulnerable immigrants so disgracefully portrayed in the Godfather movies, nor the many-headed hydra of established myth. It is, instead, a group of murderous but frequently incompetent small-time crooks. Their world was one in which life really was nasty, brutish and short, in which bosses were at most only one step removed from the footsoldiers on the streets, and in which everybody struggled to make much more than a basic living.

The Origins of Organized Crime is, as you'd expect, supplied with full scholarly apparatus and it is also richly illustrated, more often than not with photos that have never before appeared in print. Yes, it's pretty expensive - scholarly books of this sort usually are. But if you're serious about this subject, it's a book you simply cannot afford to be without.

Oh, and if the the test of a good historian is his originality, it's a test that Dr Critchley passes with flying colours.

I had the pleasure of communicating with the author during his research period, as his mafia research and my genealogy hobby overlapped on a particular individual. I had no idea how thorough and critical this text would be relative to providing a contextual framework around mafia-centric genealogy. This work is so rich in detail...it truly sets a new standard for how to properly use a records-based historical footprint to transform fiction into a non-fiction masterpiece. Bravo! I highly recommend this book to anyone researching U.S. crime families!

Dr. David Critchley has succeeded in writing perhaps the most encompassing history of the Mafia's development in America. The Origin of Organized Crime in America is devoid of any delusions of Mafia grandeur, instead relying on meticulous research to finally reveal the framework of Italian organized crime in America.

One of the pivotal events in Mafia history that has been given to fanciful conclusions and outlandish speculation was the Castellammare war, one of the more well-known gangland wars in the American underworld. Critchley re-evaluates the main players, and the real killings attributed to the war, versus those that were simply run-of-the-mill mob hits. He finally, once and for all smashes the myth of the Night of Sicilian Vespers, the mythical event where a new generation of mobsters supposedly killed off the reigning Moustache Pete's, old world dons who ran the early Mafia. Critchley finds only two killings, as opposed to the purported 40 that took place in a single day. Origin also shows clearly that old-school Sicilian dons were in major ruling position through the 1960s.

An essential book for any history buff.

This is the mob book that I have been waiting for for years. Not a bio or memoir of some bad guy, or a rehashing of a bunch of stories from the true-crime hacks mob tales echo chamber, this book is fresh research and hard analysis without any of the usual agendas. 86ing all of the usual mob mythology, author Dave Critchley digs deep and comes up with a treasure trove of fresh material which assembles into a deep and richly nuanced depiction of Italian-American criminal groups in NYC in the early 20th century. Bad news for stereotypes, preconceptions, and false assumptions, great news for anyone who has a serious interest in the subject.

David Critchley's THE ORIGIN OF ORGANIZED CRIME is the definitive analysis of the evolution of New York's infamous "Five Families" and a superb reference work for organized crime historians. It's not for the casual Mafia buff looking for sensationalist writing, speculative fiction, or gory details but rather an essential research tool for the serious academic. And the price may discourage most "Godfather" and "Goodfellas" fans but it's a wise investment for dedicated crime historians. Based on years of research and utilizing sources such as contemporary news accounts, government records, and the writings of Nicolo Gentile, Critchley provides in-depth analysis of the Black Hand, Lupo and Morello, the "Mafia-Camorra war," the "Good Killers," the Unione Siciliana. the Castellammare War, and the genealogy of New York's Mafia clans, as best as can be determined. He also critically debunks and disposes of popular myths that have been endlessly recycled in less scholarly works. There are family charts here and dozens of rare, and previously unpublished, photos. And Critchley has solved once and for all an incredible mystery that's tantalized crime historians for decades: the identity of Valachi's "Buster from Chicago". It's well worth the price of admission.

I have known Dave Critchley for many years, and share his views on the poor quality of research among many early Mafia writers. This is not a charge anyone can level at Dave. His research is exhaustive, and this book is proof of that. The attention to detail is there for all to see. In the process of writing this book, Dave has demolished many of those " Mafia Myths " so prevalent in earlier works.
So i can unreservedly reccomend this book to all serious researchers, and anybody who seeks an accurate account of NYC Mafia history.