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HomeShop at BookSurgeBiography & AutobiographyGeneralThe Genealogy of American Organized Crime |
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 A waste of $$$ Aug 28, 2008
This book is a total waste of money. I can tell you, just from the chapter on the so-called "St. Louis Family," that all of the information in this book is screwed up. Names are consistently misspelled and facts wrong or fabricated by the author. How can Carmelo Fresina be the boss until 1940 when he was killed in 1931? How is the Cuckoo Gang, the Egan's Rats, and the Hogan's part of the "St. Louis Family"? One of the names is laughable: Amato Benedello. The name he was looking for was Benedetto Amato, and yes, he was murdered in 1927, in November to be exact, with about a half-dozen other guys killed that month. He wasn't a big enough fish to be mentioned here, that's for sure. And of course there is the same old story of Kansas City sending guys to take over in St. Louis. Everyone who "took over" who supposedly came from Kansas City were longtime residents of St. Louis and never even lived in Kansas City. And then there is the Jay Robert Nash mistake of Frank "Buster" Wortman dying in 1970. He actually died in 1968. There was no John Vitale Sr. and John Vitale Jr.--there was only John Vitale (I know for a fact that came off a website like most of the other stuff here). And Raffaele Quasarano of Detroit was an advisor? John Vitale's cousin, Sam Vitale, of New Orleans, was an advisor? First I've heard of those claims. The underboss in the 1980s, according to this so-called author, was "Joe Camanata." He means Joe Cammarata. Anthony Latino was consigliere? That should be Anthony "Nino" Parrino but he isn't even close to getting that name right. And that's only for the St. Louis chapter, and that's not all of the mistakes in that chapter just a handful out of a dozen or more. It's hard to believe that someone could get so much wrong on the "St. Louis Family" in three short pages of notes (yes, notes, not actual text) but this author was able to do that. Nearly everything in that so-called chapter was in some way wrong. This is one book that I can safely say should have never been published. I would put this book up on Ebay and sell it, but I don't have the conscience to rip anybody else off with this trash. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. Don't be a sucker and let this author and his publisher rip you off, too.
Horrible Jul 31, 2008
I submitted a review a long time ago, but it disappeared. At any rate, I ordered a used copy for completeness, and it is even worse than I thought. The author says he has been studying organized crime since 1956, but everything here looks like it was pulled off the internet. The spelling errors are atrocious. Capo di tutti capi, for example, is consistently spelled capo di tutti capri. Besides that, there is a lot of info that is just plain out wrong. If it were possible to give a book a negative rating, this would be the one.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Opinion Jan 05, 2008
Having read many books on this subject, I believe this is the first non-
fiction book that included all 25 families in the United States, each one
in a family tree form from the beginning of the 20th century to the end.
I was amazed by the information in Sicily for the same time span.
I believe this is a history book on how some Italians progressed in
various parts of our country and in Sicily. I rate this book five stars.
A retired soldier
Disappointing Apr 29, 2007
This is less a book than it is a notebook. Readers will find no coherent narrative, aside from a very brief history of the American Mob. The rest of the volume is a collection of names, dates and short notes (some of which are very interesting), loosely organized by geographic region. As a collection of names, places and dates, it has some value. However, there are some glaring errors in what should have been verifiable facts, and no source information is provided (casting doubt on the rest of the contents). So the value to researchers is extremely limited.
If the author ever decided to flesh out this work with some complete sentences and some source citations, I'd be willing to throw in a couple more stars.
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