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The Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wise guys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that's over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California.
Even in Chicago, a city steeped in mob history and legend, the Family Secrets case was a true spectacle when it made it to court in 2007. A top mob boss, a reputed consigliere, and other high-profile members of the Chicago Outfit were accused in a total of 18 gangland killings, revealing organized crime's ruthless grip on the city throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Painting a vivid picture of murder, courtroom drama, family loyalties and disloyalties, journalist Jeff Coen accurately portrays the Chicago Outfit's cold-blooded killers.
Blow is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller-coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel - the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly-born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine.
Tony Spilotro was the Mob's man in Las Vegas. A feared enforcer, the bosses knew Tony would do whatever it took to protect their interests. The "Little Guy" built a criminal empire that was the envy of mobsters across the country, and his childhood pal, Frank Cullotta, helped him do it. But Tony's quest for power and lack of self-control with women cost the Mob its control of Vegas; and Tony paid for it with his life.
As the last don of the Philadelphia mob, Ralph Natale, the first-ever mob boss to turn state's evidence, provides an insider's perspective on the Mafia. Natale's reign atop the Philadelphia and New Jersey underworlds brought the region's Mafia back to prominence in the 1990s. Smart, savvy, and articulate, Natale came up in the mob and saw firsthand as it hatched its plan to control Atlantic City's casino unions.
After a SWAT team smashed down stock-market millionaire Shaun Attwood's door, he found himself inside of Arizona's deadliest jail and locked into a brutal struggle for survival. Shaun's hope of living the American Dream turned into a nightmare of violence and chaos, when he had a run-in with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer. Join Shaun on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence.
The Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wise guys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that's over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California.
Even in Chicago, a city steeped in mob history and legend, the Family Secrets case was a true spectacle when it made it to court in 2007. A top mob boss, a reputed consigliere, and other high-profile members of the Chicago Outfit were accused in a total of 18 gangland killings, revealing organized crime's ruthless grip on the city throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Painting a vivid picture of murder, courtroom drama, family loyalties and disloyalties, journalist Jeff Coen accurately portrays the Chicago Outfit's cold-blooded killers.
Blow is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller-coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel - the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly-born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine.
Tony Spilotro was the Mob's man in Las Vegas. A feared enforcer, the bosses knew Tony would do whatever it took to protect their interests. The "Little Guy" built a criminal empire that was the envy of mobsters across the country, and his childhood pal, Frank Cullotta, helped him do it. But Tony's quest for power and lack of self-control with women cost the Mob its control of Vegas; and Tony paid for it with his life.
As the last don of the Philadelphia mob, Ralph Natale, the first-ever mob boss to turn state's evidence, provides an insider's perspective on the Mafia. Natale's reign atop the Philadelphia and New Jersey underworlds brought the region's Mafia back to prominence in the 1990s. Smart, savvy, and articulate, Natale came up in the mob and saw firsthand as it hatched its plan to control Atlantic City's casino unions.
After a SWAT team smashed down stock-market millionaire Shaun Attwood's door, he found himself inside of Arizona's deadliest jail and locked into a brutal struggle for survival. Shaun's hope of living the American Dream turned into a nightmare of violence and chaos, when he had a run-in with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer. Join Shaun on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence.
It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window.
The wild, true story of the Mutiny, the hotel and club that embodied the decadence of Miami's cocaine cowboys heyday - and an inspiration for the blockbuster film Scarface.
Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Joseph Bonanno found his future amid the whiskey-running, riotous streets of Prohibition America in 1924, when he illegally entered the United States to pursue his dreams. By the age of only 26, Bonanno became a don. He eventually took over the New York underworld, igniting the "Castellammarese War", one of the bloodiest Family battles ever to hit New York City.
One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend - and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of 80-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist.
The notorious Gotti family is the stuff of mob legend. The "Dapper Don", John Gotti Sr., and his son John A. "Junior" Gotti ran New York's powerful Gambino crime family and were well known for their flamboyant style and brutal ways, an image perpetuated in popular Mafia mythology. John Alite, a mob hit man, associate, and close friend of the Gottis, has a very different story to tell.
A true-crime collection culled from the crime files of the New York Times best-selling series, Notorious USA.
"I heard you paint houses" are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the walls and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than 25 hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa.
Vincent "Chin" Gigante. He started out as a professional boxer - until he found his true calling as a ruthless contract killer. His doting mother's pet name for the boy evolved into his famous alias, "Chin", a nickname that struck fear throughout organized crime as he routinely ordered the murders of mobsters who violated the Mafia code. Vincent Gigante was hand-picked by Vito Genovese to run the Genovese Family when Vito was sent to prison. Chin raked in more than $100 million for the Genovese Family, all while evading federal investigators.
By the mid 1980s, the criminal underworld in the United States had become an ethnic polyglot; one of the most powerful illicit organizations was none other than the Cuban mob. Known on both sides of the law as "the Corporation", the Cuban mob's power stemmed from a criminal culture embedded in south Florida's exile community - those who had been chased from the island by Castro's revolution and planned to overthrow the Marxist dictator and reclaim their nation.
Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the boss of New York's Lucchese crime family, was a Mafia superstar, responsible for more than 50 murders. Currently serving 13 life sentences at a federal prison in Colorado, Casso has given journalist and New York Times best-selling author Philip Carlo the most intimate, personal look into the world of La Cosa Nostra ever seen.
Meet Michael Blutrich, mild-mannered New York lawyer and founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York City history, funded by the proceeds of an insurance embezzlement scheme. All Blutrich wanted was to lay low, make the club a success, and put his criminal acts behind him. But the Mafia got involved, and soon the FBI came knocking. Scores became wildly popular, in part thanks to Blutrich's ability to successfully bend the rules of adult entertainment. Unfortunately for Blutrich, it would all soon implode.
A sworn member of the Colombo crime family in New York City, Michael Franzese was considered the biggest moneymaker in the mob since Al Capone. At age 35, he was number 18 on Fortune Magazine's list of the 50 most wealthy and powerful Mafia bosses in America. But then he did the unthinkable. He quit the mob. Franzese met Camille Garcia, who turned his world upside down with her innocent beauty. He fell in love with her, married her, and began a new life that didn't include the Mafia.
The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America...until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime family values. And by guys like Sal Polisi.
As a member of New York's feared Colombo Family, Polisi ran the Sinatra Club, an illegal after-hours gambling den that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like John Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas - Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, and Tommy DeSimone. But the nonstop thrills of Polisi's criminal glory days abruptly ended when he was busted for drug trafficking.
Already sickened by the bloodbath that engulfed the Mob as it teetered toward extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life - a rat. In this shocking, pulse-pounding, and, at times, darkly hilarious first-person chronicle, he paints a never-before-seen picture of a larger-than-life secret underworld that, thanks to guys like him, no longer exists.
First, having just finished the book, I must say the closing couple of chapters were a real disappointment because I didn't believe a thing he said - and the last chapter, in Mexico, sounds like pure fiction, way over the top fiction, which hurts the credibility of the rest of the book since the rest of it sounds mostly plausible and realistic. But it doesn't hurt the book too much, until those last couple of chapters I really enjoyed the book, it's one of the more entertaining mob books I've read in a long while, however Sal Polisi goes a bit overboard at times framing himself as having a heart of gold as he commits crime after crime after crime that destroyed people's lives. The sex parts of the book are OK, they don't drift into the ridiculous too far. The biggest issue in mob books when they talk about sex is that it often is just bragging and completely unnecessary to the story, in this one he does straddles the line but those parts actually help move the story along, so it wasn't an issue for me.
If you like mob books this one is a worthy addition and is an entertaining read, just do yourself a favor and stop listening when he takes the stand near the end of the book.
The reader did a good job. Also I've been listening to everything at 1.25x speed as I find my mind drifting less often when listening yet it's not too fast to easily follow along, so I like to add that at 1.25x speed the reader is completely understandable, no jerkiness to the audio.
I'd say 4.1/5 stars, which is good for mob books as many are very poorly written or written in a way that comes off as having no credibility. This one however is mostly credible and is very well written.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
This is by far one of the best told stories of the 70’s NY mob. I’ve listened to dozens of books thru the years, I enjoyed the narration. Well worth the purchase.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
a real good look into the mob, it's rules and the characters. how a life of crime turns out and the corruption.also redemption
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Sal was self-deprecating in most respects in this memoir. That made him seem credible, since almost nobody admits to his brand of foibles. The narrator was 100% perfect for this book.
The way Sal tells his story, the money came easily to him the whole time. And he enjoyed his life of crime - a lot. His take on the mob is unique. Even his descriptions of John Gotti were original. Despite all the mob biographies I've listened to, I learned a lot. I didn't find anything about this book repetitive of other books in the genre.
Sal Polisi said things about major events such as the JFK assassination that made me reconsider long held beliefs. He's authoritative and on point when he expounds on salient matters. And he separate facts from beliefs, telling why he believes as he does. Pretty convincing!
For those who liked other mafia memoirs, I bet this will be a winner. It's better in my opinion than most, and binge worthy.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
a foray into the criminal mind and the conflicts of loyalty and treason. Where the culture demands continuous treasons against your fellow man while at the same time demanding unquestioned loyalty to the boss. The mafia was a cult.
loved it from start to finish ! the narration was excellent ! ubatz ! You crazy mother fucker !
Sal Polisi is a legend, thoroughly enjoyed it from start to end. what a life, what a way to end it all. respect.
My first audio book and it did not disappoint. I love stories of the NY mafia and this was beautifully told !
An interesting take from someone who actually liked John Gotti. Most mob tell-alls from the era never have many flattering things to say about the dapper don, so it was a nice point of view.
By far though, my favorite part was Sal Polisi's description of his sexual prowess. Apparently it was so potent that the dominatrix lesbian prostitute he banged melted, turned straight, and forgot to charge him.
Overall, most of the events Polosi talks about line up with the other books I've read. So, grain of salt on the love life. Enjoy the rest.
Very entertaining.
If you’ve never listened to a book on the Mafia this would be ok. I’ve listened to several. All much better than this and there’s nothing new here.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful