I’ve been writing about the Mafia since the 1990s, when my cover story, The Mob on Wall Street, appeared in BusinessWeek magazine. My first book, Born to Steal, was an exposé on the Mafia on Wall Street. Since then, I’ve been following the subject closely, and my most recent book, on the Crazy Eddie scam, is consistent with that theme.
Most people know this book due to its film adaptation, with Robert Mitchum in the title role. To me, it is a splendid book because, like all great fiction, it tells the truth. More than a great many nonfiction books, it tells the truth about the actual nature of organized crime.
It strips away the phony glamour and describes the actual nature of the mob—treacherous, violent, and unforgiving. And the dialogue is amazing! What you see in this book is not the Mafia but Irish gangsters, and they are tired blue-collar men who are just scraping by. That is what organized crime is all about today, just as it was in the 1970s.
Eddie Coyle is a small-time punk with a big-time problem - who to sell out to avoid being sent up again. Eddie works for Jimmy Scalisi, supplying him with guns for a couple of bank jobs. But a cop named Foley is onto Eddie, and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. These and others make up the bunch of hoods, gunmen, thieves, and executioners who are wheeling, dealing, chasing, and stealing in the underworld of Eddie Coyle.
Over the years a legend was built up around Meyer Lansky. A succession of books with questionable sourcing described him as the “chairman of the board” of organized crime, and made him out to be a great deal more than he actually was.
This book strips away the false hype that has surrounded Lansky and debunks many of the myths that have surrounded him. It also debunks a lot of the bad journalism that distorted his image in his later life. It shocked and astounded me, and I thought I knew all about Lansky.
The story of Meyer Lansky and the criminal empire he supervised exposes the harsh reality of life in the underworld and demonstrates how Lansky's desire to achieve mythic status as an outlaw ultimately destroyed him
Like my two other favorite books on organized crime, this book broke the mold. It was written at a time when the public was zeroing in on the violent aspects of the mob, when in fact what drove the mob was its ability to take over legitimate businesses, sometimes entire industries.
I was fascinated with the intricate details described by Kwitny in this book. There is no better book describing how the Mafia, in its heyday, got its claws into legitimate business. Kwitny did fine work exposing how that was done, and it was well-written and fascinating.
This of it as a kind of tax. Every time you buy a pizza, or a hamburger, or new clothes, or use a product that has traveled in a truck, the odds are that you are paying a tribute to one of America's crime families. This book shows that the Mafia, and the larger crime syndicate that it dominates, has control over much of what the public regards as legitimate business. And when the Dons dominate the marketplace, they bring murder, arson, and violence with them.
Like Friends of Eddie Coyle, this book was adapted into a popular movie, though it was heavily fictionalized. This book tells the true story of how a French-Mafia narcotics smuggling ring was broken up, and in this case the truth is far more fascinating than the fiction.
Moore was given access to the police involved in the case, and he provided amazing details on the work they did to crack the case. This book destroys the myth that the Mafia was not involved in narcotics when, in fact, that was a huge money-maker back in the early 1960s.
The true, absorbing and sometimes frightening documentary of the world's most successful narcotics investigation, The French Connection is one of the most fascinating crime accounts of our time. When New York City detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and his partner Sonny Grosso routinely tail Pasquale "Patsy" Fuca, after observing some wild spending at the Copacabana, they quickly realize that they are on to something really big. Patsy is not only the nephew of a mob boss on the lam but also a key negotiator in an impending delivery of narcotics from abroad. His incongruous…
One of the best books I’ve read on the drug trade. This book examines how Cuban organized crime was in some respects like the Mafia, how it achieved dominance in cocaine by corruption as well by violence. A fantastic book!
I found that the narrative drew me in, as English always does in his books, as he provided fascinating portraits of the major characters.
A biography of the spectacular rise and fall of Eddie Antar, better known as "Crazy Eddie," whose home electronics empire changed the world even as it turned out to be one of the biggest business scams of all time.
Back in the fall of 2016, we heard the news about the passing of Eddie Antar, "Crazy Eddie," as he was known to millions of people, the man behind the successful chain of electronic stores and one of the most iconic ad campaigns in history. Few things evoke the New York of a particular era like "Crazy Eddie! His prices are insaaaaane!" What's insane is that his story has never been told.
