The First Family

Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia

By: Mike Dash

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers.

Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.

In The First Family, Mike Dash tells the little known story of the Morello family. He follows the birth of the Mafia in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, from the wharves of New Orleans - where Morello himself disembarked in the United States - to the streets of Little Italy. Using previously untapped secret service archives, prison records, and interviews with surviving family members, Dash brings to life the remarkable villains and unusual heroes of the Mafia's early years, from the colorful members of the Morello family to Joseph Petrosino, an Italian cop with a thick Naples accent, and William Flynn, a dogged U.S. Secret Service agent, who banded together to bring down Morello.

More than just a pulse-quickening Mafia narrative, The First Family is the first authoritative account of a particularly crucial period in American history, in which the modern American underworld was born.

©2009 Michael Dash (P)2009 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Readers may think they know the mob, but Morello's ruthless rule makes even the fictional Tony Soprano look tame." ( Publishers Weekly)

Excellent true story

Mike Dash's research into this piece of American history is staggering. Well written and the narrator is spectacular as well. Definitely would recommend!

The book is true-crume, but reads like a story.

I was happily surprised because, for whatever reason, I find MOST audiobooks in this genre tedious. I suspect, sooner than later, I'll be listening to this book for a 3rd time!

History made really interesting

Mike Dash is up there with Mitchell Zuxkoff when it comes to writing this type of historical book. Even Better: Read Dash's book "Betavia's Grageyard:" another outstanding book.

Very well written. great research!

This was an excellent book. It was written very well and the research done is staggering! The best part is, it "reads" like a novel. It is hard to stop listening. This book would make one hell of a movie. The narrator does a very good job and when he reads the newspaper quotes he even sounds like an old time news reporter.

Great insight to the formative years of the mafia in America.

Very Cool

Great narration and damn, what a story, the detail is ridiculous. Lots of information you’ll never have seen in the movies.