Mafia

This is a book that explains the world of ‘hot money’ in the international banking arena. It promises to be one of the most important books on international organized crime, money laundering, and the complicity between legitimate and illegitimate businesses in both the United States and the former Soviet Union, among other places, during the last decade of the 20th century. In a series of intrigues that involved crooked Geneva banker Bruce Rappaport and high-level members of the...

This is the story of the Cosa Nostra: From its origins in Sicily in 1863, through the great wave of Italian immigration to America, to prohibition and the formation of the first mafia families and to the harsh realities of fascism and the postwar years in Italy where the Cosa Nostra thrived. The image of the mafioso as a “man of honor” - good to the weak, above the laws of the state but subject to a precise code - was firmly rooted in the collective imagination until the 1980's...

Subtitled 'Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down'.  The Jack Nicholson film The Departed didn’t tell half of their story. A poor kid from the slums, Robert Fitzpatrick grew up to become a stellar FBI agent and challenge the country’s deadliest gangsters. Relentless in his desire to catch, prosecute and convict Whitey Bulger, Fitzpatrick fought the nation’s most determined cop-gangster battle since Melvin Purvis hunted, confronted and killed...

Focuses on Italian-Americans who made major contributions to the development of Las Vegas from its earliest days to the present. Investors, builders, developers, musicians, contractors, lounge performers, writers and editors are all here. Balboni interviewed more than 200 people to capture the facts, the flavor, the struggles and the achievements they proudly remember. Includes 20 pgs. of footnotes, references and a bibliography, making it a vital tool for researchers. 168 Pgs.1996 ...

Throughout the late 1980s and 90s, a gang of young Asian refugees cut a bloody swath through New York's Chinatown. They were the lost children of the Vietnam War, severed from their families by violence and cast adrift in a strange land. Banding together under the leadership of a young psychopath, David Thai, they took their name from a slogan they had seen on helicopters and the helmets of U.S. soldiers: "Born to Kill." For a decade their empire was unassailable, built on fear and...

In the 1980s, the broad legal mandate of the RICO act succeeded in crushing much of the backbone of the traditional American Mafia. Across the ocean however, in the ancestral Sicilian homeland of La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia was anything but finished. Possessed of a power thought to rival that of the Italian state itself, for the past decades, the Sicilian Mafia has waged a war on the forces of law and order that has not only left thousands dead, but has created a ripple effect of crime and...

Subtitled "The War Against The American Mafia". The riveting, often bloody account of how the fifty-year attack by the federal government virtually extinguished the nation's most powerful crime syndicate. In the critically acclaimed American Mafia, Thomas Reppetto narrated the ferocious ascendancy of organized crime in America. In this fascinating sequel, he follows the mob from its peak into a shadowy period of decline as the government, no longer able to deny its existence, made subduing the...

Like the gunslinger, the gangster is a classic American characterand the gangster movie, like the Western, is one of the American cinema's enduring film genres. From Scarface to White Heat, from The Godfather to The Usual Suspects, gangland on the screen remains as popular as ever. Film scholar John McCarty traces the history of mob flicks and reveals why the films are so beloved by Americans. Packed with fascinating behind-the-scenes anecdotes, info about real-life hoods and their cinematic...

Lane chronicles the secret inner sanctums at the center of the action in gentlemen's clubs across  America. 'Confessions of a Stripper' puts you in the middle of the VIP room where freaks, fetishists, scammers, and even normal guys match wits with the dancers. Here, outlandish fantasies are bought and sold, and almost nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. 237 Pages Paperbound 2004

If you have an interest or need for information about the cops, crooks and criminologists who shaped crime and law enforcement throughout history, this is the book for you. From bank robbers and godfathers to ballistics experts and courtroom crusaders, the authors present the bold and cunning, the righteous and resourceful, all in one volume. Biographies (and some photos) of 600 people covering a period from 2100 B.C. to the present Hammurabi, who came up with the 'eye for an eye'...

From burglary to armed robbery and murder, infamous bad guy Frank Cullotta not only did it all, he admits to it in graphic detail in this book. This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro's gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta's was a world of high profile heists, street muscle, and information about many of the FBI's most wanted, info...

Subtitled "The FBI's Secret Thirty Year Relationship with a Mafia Killer". In 'Deal with the Devil', Lance draws on three decades of once secret FBI files and exclusive new interviews to tell the definitive story of Gregory Scarpa Sr., aka "The Grim Reaper" a Mafia capo, who "stopped counting" after 50 murders, while secretly betraying the Colombo crime family as a Top Echelon Criminal Informant for the Bureau. Lance draws on thousands of pages of...

Subtitled "A Historical and Theoretical Study". What is organized crime? This question has generated many responses over the decades from scholars, governments, the media, pop culture and organized criminals themselves. Layered one on top of the other, these answers cumulatively created a "Mafia Mystique" that dominated discourse until after the end of the Cold War, when transnational organized crime emerged as a pronounced, if nebulous, threat to global security and...

Gangsters of the past never looked far enough into the future to do much planning. They stole sufficient money to get by for a short while and then robbed again. Sometimes they wanted to settle down, but most knew their crimes were going to lead to jail or death and their women knew it too. Life on the run was no picnic, but gangsters' molls chose it over a settled life in suburbia. This book is a history of gangsters' molls and mob queens, and it explains who these women were, where they came...

A virtual rogues' gallery of criminals. This book covers organized crime, including those who had a hand in legal and illegal gambling. Four to five pages on: Al Capone, Frankie Carbo, Mickey Cohen, Joe Colombo, Frank Costello, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Owney Madden, Arnold Rothstein, Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel and Joe Valachi. Also includes villains of the Old West: Billy the Kid, Black Bart, Butch Cassidy, Bob Dalton, Bill Doolin, John Wesley Hardin, Tom...

Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso was the boss of New York’s Lucchese Mafia family. He worked himself to the top as a cold-blooded killer, responsible for more than 50 murders. He was also, for a while, the next-door neighbor of the author. Carlo’s sister babysat for Casso; his mother was best friends with Casso’s wife. That long and trusting relationship garnered Carlo, journalist and best-selling author (The Ice Man, 2006), unprecedented access to one of the most ruthless...

Subtitled "Myths and Realities of Organized Crime". Considered a classic, this book (now in its eighth printing) veers away from the once-accepted but erroneous theory that organized crime was the specific province of Italians, and looks further to the role of businessman, politicians and professional groups. Six sections include The History of Organized Crime, Social and Psychological Characteristics of Organized Crime, Organized Crime as an Economic and Political System and Policy...

Subtitled " How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost it to the Revolution". To underworld kingpins Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Cuba was the greatest hope for the future of American organized crime in the post-Prohibition years. In the 1950s, the Mob - with the corrupt, repressive government of brutal Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in its pocket - owned Havana's biggest luxury hotels and casinos, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the...

Subtitled 'Negotiating Life and Death For the Las Vegas Police Department'. “As he was rising, I saw Brian raise the loaded Glock .40 pistol towards the approaching SWAT officers. I wanted to scream for him to stop; I knew he was about to fulfill his ultimate goal.” What do you say to prevent someone from committing ‘suicide-by-cop’? Or has a gun pointed at a hostage? Or an armed man who has barricaded himself in a hotel room? Or a despondent woman who is threatening to kill herself? Veteran...

Subtitled "Fighting the Las Vegas Mob by the Numbers". Las Vegas, 1970's - a golden age of Glitter Gulch corruption. Dennis Gomes, the youngest division chief in Gaming Control Board history whipped a ragtag group of auditors into hardened, gun-slinging investigators and shattered clichթs about milquetoast accountant cops. Coming within a hair's breadth of death more than once, Gomes capped off his tenure with the famous bust of the Stardust skim, portrayed in the book and movie "Casino". In...

Martin Scorsese's The Departed barely touched on his story. Now radio talk-show sensation, crime reporter, and Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr takes us into the heart of the life of Johnny Martorano. For two decades, Martorano struck fear into anyone even remotely connected to his world. His partnership with Whitey Bulger and the infamous Winter Hill Gang led to twenty murders.... for which Johnny would serve twelve years in prison. Carr also looks at the politicians and FBI agents who...

The electrifying true story of the rise and fall of New York's notorious Bonanno crime family. On New York's Park Avenue on a rainy Tuesday night in October 1964, the famous Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by two mobsters and reported by the police as dead on the following morning. More than a year later, Bonanno mysteriously reappeared, setting off a bloody mob feud that came to be known as the “Banana War.” In this monumental work—packed with intimate details...

Subtitled ' The Greatest Mob Story Never Told'. Flamboyant mobster Arnold Rothstein was gambling and money. He was the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. It was rumored he masterminded the 1919 World Series fix. He was Mr. Broadway, a king of corruption holding court from his private booth at Lindy's Restaurant. In this lively, sprawling biography, the inimitable Nick Tosches examines the myth and extraordinary legacy of Arnold...

As a cop Ron Previte was corrupt. As a mobster he was brutal. And in his final role as a confidential informant to the FBI, Previte was deadly. This is his story, the story of the last days of the Philadelphia mob, and of the clash of generations that brought it down. A six-foot tall, 300-pound capo in the Philadelphia-South Jersey crime family, Previte ran every mob scam and gambit from drug trafficking and prostitution to the extortion of millions from Atlantic City. By the 1990s, he found...

Subtitled "Everything is Predetermined Nothing is by Chance". Josephine Alvarez moved freely among the famous and the infamous, always protected by powerful men who wouldn't blink an eye while ordering the execution of others. It is February 1965, and the author is at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Her hosts: Frank Sinatra and Joe E. Lewis. The twenty-three-year-old burlesque queen was regularly escorted by members of Murder Incorporated: Joseph "Possum"...

Originally published in hardcover in 1998, this is an account of life in a brothel written by a woman in charge of one of the premier Nevada cat houses. 'I metaphorically fling open the doors of Sheri's Brothel in southern Nevada and invite the public in to witness incidents that occur daily', she states. The stories related here are strange, funny, sad, fascinating, disturbing and sometimes grim. I use the language of the prostitutes and their clients. I tell it like it is with no attempt to...

The chilling story of six generations of bloodshed, deals, deception, and uncontrolled greed and lust for power of men like Luciano, Costello, Lansky, Genovese, Anastasia, Gambino and Gottti, men for whom murder and betrayal were a way of life. This is the story of the Mafia's stranglehold on New York. Photographs Indexed 527 Pgs. 1994

Subtitled "My Life of Crime in the Chicago Police Department", Mob Cop tells about former Chicago police officer and Outfit associate Fred Pascente as the man who links Tony Spilotro, a central character in Nicholas Pileggi��_��s Casino and one of Chicago��_��s most notori��__ous mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago��_��s Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by...

Subtitled "The Mafia, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, and Me!". From Karen Gravano, a star of the hit VH1 reality show Mob Wives, comes a revealing memoir of a mafia childhood, where love and family come hand-in-hand with murder and betrayal. Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With nineteen confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss and John Gotti's right-hand man, is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn...

Charlie Carneglia was a stone-cold killer who fell in with the bloodthirsty John Gotti crew. As the infamous crime family rose to power with their murderous trail of sex, jealousy, greed, and revenge, Carneglia rose with them. Mafia, Madness And Murder. This is the horrifying story of a misfit who fit perfectly into the New York mafia. In a harrowing journey inside a ruthless criminal underworld, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony M. DeStefano chronicles one man’s life in a world of...

This book takes you through the gangland history of the Detroit underworld and shows you the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate. Included are rare archival pictures and images. From the 20th century and the iconic Purple Gang during prohibition through the Italian Mafia in the 1930s to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s and everything in between. 128 Pgs. 2006

Morris "Moe" Dalitz was America's most secretive and most successful mobster. As a major architect of the United States' national crime syndicate, Dalitz was active in various fields of organized crime from 1918 until his death, all while spinning a web of myth and mock-respectability around himself so dense that decades after his demise, most mistake the legend for reality. From Prohibition-era bootlegging to the Reagan years, no other individual was present at so many pivotal events in...

Susan Berman grew up in Las Vegas luxury as the daughter of Davie Berman, casino mogul and notorious mafia leader. After her father died she learned about his mob connections. Susan then dedicated her life to learning about Vegas and its underworld chiefs. Her life took a bizarre turn in l982 when Kathie Durst��_��_��_the wife of her good friend, Robert Durst, mysteriously disappeared. Durst was a prime suspect but the case was never solved. After the Kathie Durst case was re-opened, the DA...

This book provides a comprehensive sociological explanation for the emergence and continuation of organized crime in Chicago. Tracing the roots of political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in Chicago and other large American cities, Lombardo challenges the dominant belief that organized crime in America descended directly from the Sicilian Mafia. According to this widespread "alien conspiracy" theory, organized crime evolved in a linear...

By the time he turned 20, the author was the drug boss for South Boston Irish mobster James 'Whitey' Bulger and later served 12 years in federal prison for drug trafficking. This is his memoir, dripping with the underworld holy trinity of sex, drugs and violence. Shea traded a foundering boxing career for a gig making $4,000 a night selling cocaine and marijuana. Before long, Bulger took him under his wing and Shea ascended the ranks. To hear Shea tell the story, he's about the...

Subtitled "Sin City's Most Prolific Criminal and the Cop Who Caught Him'. Millions in stolen property, revolting sex crimes and murder-for-hire were all in the mix for a Las Vegas police detective as he toiled to take Sin City’s most prolific criminal off the streets for good. New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Sacrifice Detective Bradley Nickell brings you the inside scoop on the investigation, arrest and conviction of the most prolific repeat offender Las Vegas has ever known. Daimon...