Organized Crime History

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.

Noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group - and that he had 24 hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man's quest to report the truth of his country - as he races to save his own life.

In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers.

Pablo Escobar was a mama’s boy who cherished his family and sang in the shower, yet he bombed a passenger plane and formed a death squad that used genital electrocution. Most Escobar biographies only provide a few pieces of the puzzle, but this action-packed 1000-page book reveals everything about the king of cocaine.

Dive into the clandestine world of one of New York's most enigmatic and feared crime syndicates with this comprehensive exploration of the Bonanno Mafia Crime Family. This meticulously researched book unveils the dark and complex web of activities, power struggles, and influential figures that shaped the Bonanno family's legacy. From its roots in the 1890s under the guidance of founder Salvatore Maranzano, this narrative traces the Bonanno family's rise to power in the American underworld.

In this riveting and relentless nonfiction thriller, award-winning investigative reporter William C. Rempel tells the harrowing story of former Cali cartel insider Jorge Salcedo, an ordinary man facing an extraordinary dilemma—a man forced to risk everything to escape the powerful and treacherous Cali crime syndicate.

A rich biography of the legendary figure at the center of the century’s darkest secrets: an untold story of Golden Age Hollywood, modern Las Vegas, JFK-era scandal, and international intrigue from Lee Server, the New York Times best-selling author of Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing....

Books about the Kennedys are legion. Yet missing until now has been the exploration of the bond between Jack and Bobby, and the part that it played in their rise and fall. Richard D. Mahoney gives us Jack and Bobby in all their hubris and humanity, youthfulness and fatalism. Here is American history as it unfolds. The Kennedy Brothers is a fresh and masterful account of the men whose legacy continues to hold the American imagination.

Midcentury Los Angeles: A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America", a land of sunshine and orange groves, Midwestern values, and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men - one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief - each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.

In the late 1970s, criminal mastermind John Milligan and his associates conspired to import heroin into Far North Queensland via a remote mountaintop airdrop. In a story that is stranger than fiction, it took them three trips through dense jungle to locate the heroin, but they only recovered one of the two packages. When narcotics Agent John Shobbrook took on the investigation of this audacious crime, codenamed 'Operation Jungle', his career was on the rise within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Historians have previously glazed over the Mafia's formative years. In this first volume, Ferrante explores its Sicilian roots, before following a cast of larger-than-life characters who arrived as fugitives on American shores. Through these and other lives - including legendary mobsters Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Seigel - Ferrante tells the extraordinary story of the Mafia's rise in America, as they provided alcohol during Prohibition, created the gambling mecca Las Vegas and practically took over the island of Cuba.

An unprecedented look inside a deadly and obscenely wealthy branch of the Italian mafia and the electrifying story of the women who risked everything to bring them down. The Calabrian Mafia - known as the ’Ndrangheta - is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls 70 percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals - supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists - and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the EU.

New York Times best-selling author T. J. English, the acclaimed master chronicler of the Irish Mob in America, offers a front row seat at the trial of one of the most notorious gangsters of all - Whitey Bulger - and pulls back the veil to expose a breathtaking history of corruption and malfeasance.

Meet Michael D. Blutrich, founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York history. A resourceful lawyer at one of the city's most respected firms, Blutrich fell into the skin trade almost by accident, but it was his legal savvy that made Scores the first club in Manhattan to feature lap dances and enabled him to neatly sidestep a law requiring dancers to wear pasties by instead covering their nipples with latex paint. Soon Scores was a home away from home for everyone from sports superstars and Oscar-winning actors to pop singers and political notables alike.

Charles Bowden writes, “this book is not about how the world ends but how a new world is being born.” Murder City explores this new world, focusing on the idea that Mexico is collapsing into a permanent culture of violence. Bowden focuses on Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, last year alone 1,607 people were murdered, a number that is set to accelerate in 2009.

Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality of their future a decade later: a country impoverished and controlled at every level by organized crime. This riveting book views the 1990s reform period through the experiences of individual citizens, revealing the changes that have swept Russia and their effect on Russia's age-old ways of thinking.

Since the beginning of civilization, crime and injustice has existed. At the same time, gangs in all shapes and sizes have been around, from rebels, dissidents, and rogue soldiers to the average circle of miscreants loitering in alleys and behind convenience stores. In Japan, a gang of a different breed would arise - one underscored by honor, respect, family, and a code of ethics. They are the Yakuza. The Yakuza claim to be the Robin Hoods of the Far East. While they may lean towards the other side of the law, justice is all they truly aim for.

Rear Admiral Terry McKnight, USN (Ret.) served as Commander, Counter-Piracy Task Force - Gulf of Aden. After his tour in the waters off the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, he retired from the Navy and began seriously researching the subject. Pirate Alley explores every aspect of Somali piracy, from how the pirates operate to how the actions of a relative handful of youthful criminals and their bosses have impacted the world economy. The book examines various answers to the question: "How do you solve a problem like Somalia?"

For as long as it has gripped our imaginations, the Mafia has been tied to an ingrained image of masculinity. We learn about "made men," "wiseguys," and "goodfellas" leading criminal organizations whose culture prizes machismo, with women as ancillary and often-powerless characters: trivialized mistresses and long-suffering mob wives. The reality is far more complex.

From the bizarre world of female Japanese motorcycle gangs to the historic rise and fall of London's 40 Elephants, the history of female organized crime is both fascinating and strange. These are the stories, both true and legendary, of the female crime bosses that broke the mold of feminine gentility. This is the secret world of female gangsters. Most of society thinks of women as the gentler sex, the sex with more compassion and empathy, not prone to violence. The truth is history, and current events, are littered with stories of violent women who do whatever it takes to get what they want; women who either revel in, or accept as needed, whatever acts of torture, murder, and depravity that are required to achieve their goals.