Customer Reviews

World Encyclopedia of Organized Crime (Paragon True Crime Library)

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Truth in advertising? This is solely about the U.S., with a very few token entries on people and place outside it. Nothing on the Triads, nothing on the Golden Triangle, nothing on Marseilles or Hong Kong, nothing on modern international gangs such as the Jamaicans or Nigerians, etc., etc. I returned my copy to Amazon in great disappointment. If you want biographies of some U.S. figures (only some: nothing on Harold Meltzer, for example) with ugly pictures, this might be of some use. But it's solely oriented to personalities, not to analysis

Trying to find a good reference book about organized crime? Want one at a good price? Jay Robert Nash has created the perfect book for you with World Encyclopedia of Organized Crime from De Capo Press.

The over 600 pages of the Who's Who in organized crime is covered in an A to Z format. From Joe Adonis, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugs Moran and so many others, you'll find the fascinating stories and cross-references.

You may find other books more detailed, but I have found this book to be complete in the overall number of people covered. The book is an easy read and the index makes it easy to look up anybody or any topic.

You'll be hard pressed to find a better value for your money. About the only thing missing is a cd-rom software application.

While its some feat to assemble this amount of information in one boopk, the author never actually goes out to check the accuracy of the data. This causes many factual mistakes to merge. Some are very basic, such as the statement that Jack McGurn was born in Chicago, rather than in Sicily. In a field like this, where errors are commonplace, you need a book that tries to get the truth about personalities and events if its not to be just another myth-spreader. This sadly isn't it.