The First Family
Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
Hundreds of books have been written about the American Mafia, but none has told how it came into existence. This one does. Mafia books are notoriously unreliable, too often filled with the recycled errors of earlier authors. This one has been painstakingly researched from primary sources, including interviews with surviving family members and a vast, previously unexamined Secret Service archive. The result is an extraordinary work of history that grips, astonishes and chills the blood like a thriller.
It tells the little-known story of the Morello family, pioneers of protection rackets, bizarre rituals and Mafia wars. Before the Five Families who dominated US organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare.
Mike Dash follows the birth of the Mafia in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, from the wharves of New Orleans to the streets of Little Italy. He brings to life the remarkable villains and unusual heroes of the Mafia’s early years, and does so without ever resorting to fiction or “imagined” history.
The First Family is more than just a pulse-quickening Mafia narrative. This is how it really happened.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Decades before the Five Families emerged and more than half a century before Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather, Giuseppe Morello and his family controlled all manner of crime in New York City. Bestselling historian Dash (Satan's Circus; Tulipomania) presents an enthralling account of this little-known "boss of bosses," dubbed "the Clutch Hand" because of his deformed arm. Arriving with his family from Corleone, Sicily, in 1892, Morello soon set up a successful operation counterfeiting American and Canadian bills. His empire expanded to include extorting local businesses, insurance scams and kidnappings. The Mafia a term that Dash underscores was used by outsiders, not members was in its infancy when Morello came to America, but by the time he was gunned down in 1930, families had cropped up in all five boroughs and in cities across the country. Dash depicts the balance between loyalty and betrayal as an ever-changing dance and nimbly catalogues the endless gruesome murders committed in the name of revenge and honor. Readers may think they know the mob, but Morello's ruthless rule makes even the fictional Tony Soprano look tame. Maps.
