Download or read book Mafia Republic Italy s Criminal Curse Cosa Nostra Ndrangheta and Camorra from 1946 to the Present written by John Dickie and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In MAFIA REPUBLIC, John Dickie, Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London and author of the international bestsellers COSA NOSTRA and MAFIA BROTHERHOODS, shows how the Italian mafias have grown in power and become more and more interconnected, with terrifying consequences. In 1946, Italy became a democratic Republic, thereby entering the family of modern western nations. But deep within Italy there lurked a forgotten curse: three major criminal brotherhoods, whose methods had been honed over a century of experience. As Italy grew, so did the mafias. Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the camorra from Naples, and the mysterious 'ndrangheta from Calabria stood ready to enter the wealthiest and bloodiest period of their long history. Italy made itself rich by making scooters, cars and handbags. The mafias carved out their own route to wealth through tobacco smuggling, construction, kidnapping and narcotics. And as criminal business grew exponentially, the mafias grew not just more powerful, but became more interconnected. By the 1980s, Southern Italy was on the edge of becoming a narco-state. The scene was set for a titanic confrontation between heroic representatives of the law, and mafiosi who could no longer tolerate any obstacle to their ambitions. This was a war for Italy's future as a civilized country. At its peak in 1992-93, the 'ndrangheta was beheading people in the street, and the Sicilian mafia murdered its greatest enemies, investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, before embarking on a major terrorist bombing campaign on the Italian mainland. Today, the long shadow of mafia history still hangs over a nation wracked by debt, political paralysis, and widespread corruption. While police put their lives on the line every day, one of Silvio Berlusconi's ministers said that Italy had to 'learn to live with the mafia'; suspicions of mafia involvement still surround some of the country's most powerful media moguls and politicians. The latest investigations show that its reach is astonishing: it controls much of Europe's wholesale cocaine trade, and representatives from as far away as Germany, Canada and Australia come to Calabria to seek authorisation for their affairs. Just when it thought it had finally contained the mafia threat, Italy is now discovering that it harbours the most global criminal network of them all.

Download or read book The Mafia Curse written by Cy Egan and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2008 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Italian-American experience is a saga of tragedy and triumph -- the struggle of proud, religious, life-loving people stained by an unfair curse of criminality that is still perpetuated today by crime writers, TV shows and movies. The Mafia Curse tells how the stigma was born in the late Nineteenth Century when emigrants to America from Italy were terrorized by a small band of their own compatriots and unfairly smeared as criminals by an American press seeking to boost readership by pandering to public prejudice. Every other immigrant group that came before and after brought its own share of criminals, but most were excused on grounds that their lawlessness was bred by poverty and an inability to break into the economic mainstream. Only the Italians were burned with the brand of infamy and reviled by a nation that conveniently ignored the reality that crime infects all races and knows no nationality. Irish heritage was never cited as a factor when gangsters like Chicago's Dion O'Bannion and George "Bugs" Moran shot up Chicago, or when bandit cop-killer Francis "Two Gun" Crowley died in the electric chair after a murderous rampage. The Gaelic roots of bank robber Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd and kidnapper-bootlegger George "Machinegun" Kelly are seldom noted. John Dillinger's German ancestry was an ignored footnote to his violent bank robbing spree through the Midwest. Few people -- even crime writers -- are aware that Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, a member of Kate "Ma" Barker's family-oriented gang, was of Lithuanian background. And forgotten altogether is my own namesake gang, Egan's Rats, who fought for control of bootlegging in St. Louis under the aegis of "Jellyroll" Egan, a professional "legbreaker" for anti-union businessmen. Adopting the great American spirit of hard work and stick-to-it-iveness, the Italians survived the onslaught of hate with a deep devotion to family life that centered on nurturing and educating their children. They rose to the highest levels of academia, government, industry, science and show business, slowly carving out a slice of the American dream. Enshrined in the pantheon of their American accomplishments are names like Alito, Coppola, Cuomo, Capra, De Niro, DiMaggio, Giamatti, Giuliani, Iacocca, LaGuardia, Puzo, Scalia, Scorcese, Sinatra, Stallone, Travolta and Valentino. Yet in 1952, Salvatore Lombino, who authored the best-selling book, The Blackboard Jungle, and later wrote dozens of wildly successful mystery novels and screenplays, was forced to adopt the pen names Evan Hunter and Ed McBain to get the attention of publishers he claimed had ignored his work because of his Italian heritage. Recent surveys show that 78% of teens and 74% of adults in America still associate Italians with blue-collar jobs or with organized crime while the U. S. Justice Department says 67% are white collar employees and less than .0025% are mob-connected. That percentage factors out to 650 bad guys in the estimated Italian-American population of 26 million. This is the story of how the Mafia Curse began in the waning decades if the Nineteenth Century and the exploits of intrepid Italian-American detective named Joseph Petrosino. who loved his fellow Italians passionately and drove himself to the limit to punish their tormentors and preserve their honor and dignity in a newfound land. By the time Petrosino became New York City's sole investigator of Italian-American crime in 1891, sensational newspaper articles had already tarred the Italians as inherently criminal and either soldiers in or sympathetic to the Mafia. The image was reinforced within months by the worst massacre of Italian immigrants in the nation's history. Reports of the mass lynching stamped the word Mafia on the consciousness of Americans for a century to come. The flaming prejudice grew over the ensuing two decades, as Petrosino fought a rising tide of murders, muggings, bombings,

Download or read book Cosa Nostra A History of the Sicilian Mafia written by John Dickie and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Italian-American mafia has its roots in a mysterious and powerful criminal network in Sicily. While the mythology of the mafia has been widely celebrated in American culture, the true origins of its rituals, laws, and methods have never actually been revealed. John Dickie uses startling new research to expose the secrets of the Sicilian mafia, providing a fascinating account that is more violent, frightening, and darkly comic than anything conceived in popular movies and novels. How did the Sicilian mafia begin? How did it achieve its powerful grip in Italy and America? How does it operate today? From the mafia's origins in the 1860s to its current tense relationship with the Berlusconi government, Cosa Nostra takes us to the inner sanctum where few have dared to go before. This is an important work of history and a revelation for anyone who ever wondered what it means to be "made" in the mob.

Download or read book Mafia Prince written by Phil Leonetti and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MONEY, MURDER, AND MACHIAVELLIAN MAYHEM . . . CONTAINS A NEW EPILOGUE Mafia Prince is the first person account of one of the most brutal eras in Mafia history -- "Little Nicky" Scarfo's reign as boss of the Philadelphia family in the 1980s -- written by Scarfo's underboss and nephew, "Crazy Phil" Leonetti. The youngest-ever underboss at the age of 33, Leonetti was at the crux of the violent breakup of the traditional American Mafia in the 1980s when he infiltrated Atlantic City after gambling was legalized, and later turned state's evidence against his own. His testimony led directly to the convictions of dozens of high-ranking men including John Gotti, Vincent Gigante, and the downfall of his own uncle, Nick Scarfo -- sparking the beginning of the end of La Cosa Nostra (the insiders' term for the Mafia, translated as "This Thing of Ours").

Download or read book The Mafia Encyclopedia written by Carl Sifakis and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 500 alphabetical entries provide information on the people, places and events associated with the Mafia.

Download or read book The Mafia written by Al Cimino and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mafia began on the small Mediterranean island of Sicily. It grew to become a major political force in Italy, while its tentacles penetrated every aspect of life in the United States. Through drugs, it spread its influence around the world. This is its story.

Download or read book Blood Brotherhoods written by John Dickie and published by Sceptre. This book was released on 2011 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is far from being Italy's only dangerous criminal fraternity. The south of the country hosts two other major mafias: the camorra, from Naples and its hinterland; and the 'ndrangheta, the mafia from the poor and isolated region of Calabria that has now risen to become the most powerful mob of all. Each of these brotherhoods has its own methods, its own dark rituals, its own style of ferocity and corruption. Their early history is little known; indeed some of it has been entirely shrouded in myth and silence. Until now.

Download or read book Mafia Brotherhoods written by Letizia Paoli and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on previously undisclosed confessions of former mafia members now cooperating with the police, Letizia Paoli provides a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure in Italy. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.

Download or read book Blood Oath written by George Fresolone and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the author's transformation from aspiring underboss to government agent who stopped believing in the mob way of life and wanted to get out

Download or read book Cursed written by Joanna Tokarska-Bakir and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cursed, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir investigates the July 4, 1946, Kielce pogrom, a milestone in the periodization of the Jewish diaspora. This massacre compelled thousands of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust to flee postwar Poland. It remains a negative reference point in the Polish historical narrative and represents a lack of reckoning with the role of antisemitism in postwar Polish society and identity politics. Tokarska-Bakir weaves together the voices of the Kielce pogrom survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators with a myriad of other archival sources. Her meticulous research exposes wartime and postwar biographies of local factory workers, city and church officials, local police officers, and members of the security service, some of whom participated in the Holocaust and then directly or indirectly participated in the Kielce pogrom. Tokarska-Bakir paints a social portrait that explores people's behavior in light of forces and emotions greater than themselves. She reconstructs a postwar communist system that, despite promises to combat deeply rooted antisemitism, not only failed to prevent its spread but turned a blind eye to it and eventually used it to legitimize itself. Cursed is a microhistory that recreates the events of the Kielce pogrom step by step and examines the dominant hypotheses about the pogrom through the prism of previously classified archival evidence. It offers readers a nuanced analysis that cuts across social and ideological divisions. The resulting narrative is filled with new discoveries not only about the Kielce pogrom but about the nature of antisemitism, hostility toward minorities, and collective violence. Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Download or read book Lanza s Mob written by Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-06-27 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting sociological as well as historical perspectives, this book supplies readers with a fascinating, unprecedented look at the most successful organized-crime family they've probably never heard of. From the 1920s until the early 21st century, one Sicilian mob family defied everyone from the California attorney general to J. Edgar Hoover to chart their own American Dream. Unlike their flashier rivals in New York and Chicago who met their end by the knife, the bullet, or a judge's gavel, this crime family prospered and grew alongside their adopted home of San Francisco. This book tells how they did it. Readers will learn how the Lanzas managed to retain control of their patch from the end of Prohibition through the Summer of Love and into the beginnings of the dot-com era, gaining insight into not only what the west-coast branch of the Mob did, but also why they did it. The documentation of how this mostly unknown crime syndicate formed, evolved, and eventually folded is set against the backdrop of the city of San Francisco transforming itself from a gritty port and manufacturing hub dominated by Italian- and Irish-Americans into the multicultural intellectual and services capital it is today.

Download or read book The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860 1960 written by Anton Blok and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study seeks to account for the rural mafia in western Sicily in the 19th & 20th centuries through a detailed examination of the overall social networks mafiosi of a particular peasant community formed with other individuals.

Download or read book Blood Curse Vampire Mafia written by Angela Sanders and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a witch accidentally drains an entire clan of vampires with one tiny spell? It just might start a war between the Boston Clan of Vampires and Salem Witches. Harlow's tired of being cursed. She's cursed as a witch with little power. She's cursed by Mother Nature, and most of all, she's cursed as the worst witch of her entire coven. She just wants one freaking day of peace. One. Is that too much to ask? Emilio's the boss of the Boston Vampire Clan, and he's pissed. He's got one mission: find the little witch who almost offed his whole family-and kill her. He doesn't care if it starts a war with the witches. Emilio's already got blood on his hands-what's a little more? But when he meets Harlow, he feels a spark, and it's not freaking magic. What's he supposed to do? There's only one thing, and she ain't gonna like it. What do they say about best-laid plans? Yeah, they never pan out. Let the games begin in this somewhat comedic, mafia, dark and steamy paranormal romance with a twist! Part 1 was previously released in Supernatural Syndicate: A Limited Edition of Magical Mafia Stories. This is the full version in its entirety, with additional scenes (added to the original Part 1), and brand-new, smoking-hot pages, waiting to be devoured.

Download or read book Maid to the Mafia Totally Captivated written by Wanitta Praks and published by Wanitta Praks Media. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’ll do anything. Cooking, cleaning, even making coffee. I’m good at making coffee.” Upon uttering the word coffee, Jenny Stone, the smart, resilient, and sharp-tongued girl somehow finds herself paying off her father’s debt by working as a maid to the mafia boss, Giovanni Dente, the obsessive-compulsive coffee drinker with movie star good looks. And this is just the beginning of Jenny’s new life. Between serving the man his brew at ungodly hours and doing his dirty work, she also has to attend college, ace her exams, and find a way to contact her father and sister who have abandoned her. But within the intricate web Giovanni binds around her, when it comes time for her to leave, she isn’t sure if she can make it out alive, especially when somewhere along the way, she realizes her heart is totally captivated. Note: Maid to the Mafia is a lighthearted romantic comedy mafia romance series. This first book ends in a cliffhanger. Maid to the Mafia series reading order: Book 1: Totally Captivated (free to download) Book 2: Totally Alluring Book 3: Totally Intoxicated Book 4: Totally Devoted

Download or read book A Beauty So Cursed written by Beena Khan and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bride is sacred whether given or...stolen. Once upon a time... With every end comes a new beginning. I'm an enigma of a man with two sides. The same violent blood that's in the Russian mafia, the Solntsevskaya Bratva lies in my veins. I'm told I could be the new Pakhan. There's a young scarred beauty in the kingdom, Lada Sokolova with bright eyes, a noble Mafia princess. The fairest in the kingdom. Her marks go deeper than the ones carved on her face. I see her, and the pain in her eyes mirrors my own. They say she was supposed to be betrothed to my family. She's too young for me. I'm twelve years her senior so I reject her. Now, she's getting married to a brutal Vor who's more than twice her age. It's been decided, and I can't interfere. I do the one thing I shouldn't have, putting my life on the line. I take her. I kidnap a bride in her wedding dress. I'm only doing what's right, protecting an innocent. ....even from the predator inside of me. Welcome to New York's Underworld. Loosely based on the fairytale. A standalone age-gap romance about how much you would risk for the one you love. For a greater reading experience, check out the first three books of the Beauty & The Beast series. Recommended for fans of forbidden love, age gap, and enemies to lovers. Includes Bonus scenes of the previous characters in the series.

Download or read book Delicious written by Lori Foster and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects three love stories set in the town of Delicious, Ohio, including Lori Foster's "Once in a Blue Moon," in which the owner of a quaint bookstore has trouble keeping her fantasies about a famous writer to herself.

Download or read book Challenging the Mafia Mystique written by Rino Coluccello and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is one of the most intriguing criminal phenomena in the world. It is an unparalleled organised criminal grouping that over almost two centuries has been able not only to successfully permeate licit and illicit economy, politics and civil society, but also to influence and exercise authoritative power over both the underworld and the upper-world. This criminal phenomenon has been a captivating conundrum for scholars of different disciplines who have tried to explain with various paradigms the reasons behind the emergence and consolidation of the mafia. Challenging the Mafia Mystique provides an analysis of the changes the Sicilian mafia has undergone, from legitimisation to denunciation. Rino Coluccello highlights how, from the very emergence of the organised criminal groups in Sicily, a culture existed that was protective and tolerant of the mafia. He argues that the various conceptualisations of the mafia that dominated the public and scientific debate in the nineteenth and more than half of the twentieth century created a mystique, which legitimised the mafia and contributed to their success. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of organised crime, Italian politics and Italian literature.