Author: Ralph Blumenthal
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307815463
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 558
Book Description
July 12, 1979: The fearsome Bonanno family boss, Carmine Galante, is gunned down in a gruesome ambush at a Brooklyn restaurant. The hit launches an FBI investigation that soon becomes the largest in the bureau's history, as agents uncover a trail leading to a clandestine arm of the Sicilian Mafia. Evidence points to an all but unknown criminal franchise at work in the U.S. within the strife-torn Cosa Nostra. The mystery deepens. Surveillance photos snapped secretly from FBI vans and lookouts in Queens and Brooklyn show a cast of characters the bureau's mob experts cannot identify. What is in the cartons these Sicilians are loading into the trunks of their Mercedes? Who is trying to spirit $60 million out of the country and why? And where is the mountain of money coming from? The FBI has stumbled across a billion-dollar drug pipeline that is funneling tons of Turkish morphoine base to Sicilian labs and heroin into the United States through pizza parlors, cafes, and boutiques. Where the French Connection ends, the Pizza Connection begins. This is the dramatic inside story of that historic case and the struggle of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs Service, and New York Police Department to deal the Mafia a crippling blow. The early 1980s are a crucial time for the FBI. It is emerging from the debacles of J. Edgar Hoover's administration, which long refused to acknowledge traditional organized crime, and is about to take on a new assignment policing anti-drug laws alongside the DEA. The exploding case is assigned to an unlikely pair of agents: the intense, Sicilian-born Carmine Russo and the laid-back Charlie Rooney. Together with an expanding army of investigators in the U.S. and abroad, they follow a trail that leads from sidewalk pizzerias and pay phones in Long Island, New Jersey, and rural Illinois, to bank vaults and hideouts in Miami, the Bahamas, Zurich, Palermo, Rio, Madrid, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Thousands of hours of wiretapped conversations and surveillance photos reveal a deadly, shadowy world of coded messages, midnight dropoffs of heroin packed in paper bags and shirt boxes, and vast fortunes laundered through some of America's biggest brokerage firms. But the crimelords Russo and Rooney stalk are not their only nemesis; they must also fend off jealous and impatient bureaucrats, and more than once crooked cops come close to blowing the case.
Last Days of the Sicilians
Author: Ralph Blumenthal
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307815463
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 558
Book Description
July 12, 1979: The fearsome Bonanno family boss, Carmine Galante, is gunned down in a gruesome ambush at a Brooklyn restaurant. The hit launches an FBI investigation that soon becomes the largest in the bureau's history, as agents uncover a trail leading to a clandestine arm of the Sicilian Mafia. Evidence points to an all but unknown criminal franchise at work in the U.S. within the strife-torn Cosa Nostra. The mystery deepens. Surveillance photos snapped secretly from FBI vans and lookouts in Queens and Brooklyn show a cast of characters the bureau's mob experts cannot identify. What is in the cartons these Sicilians are loading into the trunks of their Mercedes? Who is trying to spirit $60 million out of the country and why? And where is the mountain of money coming from? The FBI has stumbled across a billion-dollar drug pipeline that is funneling tons of Turkish morphoine base to Sicilian labs and heroin into the United States through pizza parlors, cafes, and boutiques. Where the French Connection ends, the Pizza Connection begins. This is the dramatic inside story of that historic case and the struggle of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs Service, and New York Police Department to deal the Mafia a crippling blow. The early 1980s are a crucial time for the FBI. It is emerging from the debacles of J. Edgar Hoover's administration, which long refused to acknowledge traditional organized crime, and is about to take on a new assignment policing anti-drug laws alongside the DEA. The exploding case is assigned to an unlikely pair of agents: the intense, Sicilian-born Carmine Russo and the laid-back Charlie Rooney. Together with an expanding army of investigators in the U.S. and abroad, they follow a trail that leads from sidewalk pizzerias and pay phones in Long Island, New Jersey, and rural Illinois, to bank vaults and hideouts in Miami, the Bahamas, Zurich, Palermo, Rio, Madrid, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Thousands of hours of wiretapped conversations and surveillance photos reveal a deadly, shadowy world of coded messages, midnight dropoffs of heroin packed in paper bags and shirt boxes, and vast fortunes laundered through some of America's biggest brokerage firms. But the crimelords Russo and Rooney stalk are not their only nemesis; they must also fend off jealous and impatient bureaucrats, and more than once crooked cops come close to blowing the case.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307815463
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 558
Book Description
July 12, 1979: The fearsome Bonanno family boss, Carmine Galante, is gunned down in a gruesome ambush at a Brooklyn restaurant. The hit launches an FBI investigation that soon becomes the largest in the bureau's history, as agents uncover a trail leading to a clandestine arm of the Sicilian Mafia. Evidence points to an all but unknown criminal franchise at work in the U.S. within the strife-torn Cosa Nostra. The mystery deepens. Surveillance photos snapped secretly from FBI vans and lookouts in Queens and Brooklyn show a cast of characters the bureau's mob experts cannot identify. What is in the cartons these Sicilians are loading into the trunks of their Mercedes? Who is trying to spirit $60 million out of the country and why? And where is the mountain of money coming from? The FBI has stumbled across a billion-dollar drug pipeline that is funneling tons of Turkish morphoine base to Sicilian labs and heroin into the United States through pizza parlors, cafes, and boutiques. Where the French Connection ends, the Pizza Connection begins. This is the dramatic inside story of that historic case and the struggle of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs Service, and New York Police Department to deal the Mafia a crippling blow. The early 1980s are a crucial time for the FBI. It is emerging from the debacles of J. Edgar Hoover's administration, which long refused to acknowledge traditional organized crime, and is about to take on a new assignment policing anti-drug laws alongside the DEA. The exploding case is assigned to an unlikely pair of agents: the intense, Sicilian-born Carmine Russo and the laid-back Charlie Rooney. Together with an expanding army of investigators in the U.S. and abroad, they follow a trail that leads from sidewalk pizzerias and pay phones in Long Island, New Jersey, and rural Illinois, to bank vaults and hideouts in Miami, the Bahamas, Zurich, Palermo, Rio, Madrid, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Thousands of hours of wiretapped conversations and surveillance photos reveal a deadly, shadowy world of coded messages, midnight dropoffs of heroin packed in paper bags and shirt boxes, and vast fortunes laundered through some of America's biggest brokerage firms. But the crimelords Russo and Rooney stalk are not their only nemesis; they must also fend off jealous and impatient bureaucrats, and more than once crooked cops come close to blowing the case.
Octopus
Author: Claire Sterling
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393027969
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Traces the development of the world's largest international crime syndicate and examines their control of the illegal drug trade
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393027969
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Traces the development of the world's largest international crime syndicate and examines their control of the illegal drug trade
The Sicilian
Author: Mario Puzo
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345480740
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
After Mario Puzo wrote his internationally acclaimed The Godfather, he has often been imitated but never equaled. Puzo's classic novel, The Sicilian, stands as a cornerstone of his work—a lushly romantic, unforgettable tale of bloodshed, justice, and treachery. . . . The year is 1950. Michael Corleone is nearing the end of his exile in Sicily. The Godfather has commanded Michael to bring a young Sicilian bandit named Salvatore Guiliano back with him to America. But Guiliano is a man entwined in a bloody web of violence and vendettas. In Sicily, Guiliano is a modern day Robin Hood who has defied corruption—and defied the Cosa Nostra. Now, in the land of mist-shrouded mountains and ancient ruins, Michael Corleone's fate is entwined with the dangerous legend of Salvatore Guiliano: warrior, lover, and the ultimate Siciliano. Praise for The Sicilian “Puzo is a master storyteller.”—USA Today “The Balzac of the mafia.”—Time “An accomplished and imaginative writer.”—Los Angeles Times
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345480740
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
After Mario Puzo wrote his internationally acclaimed The Godfather, he has often been imitated but never equaled. Puzo's classic novel, The Sicilian, stands as a cornerstone of his work—a lushly romantic, unforgettable tale of bloodshed, justice, and treachery. . . . The year is 1950. Michael Corleone is nearing the end of his exile in Sicily. The Godfather has commanded Michael to bring a young Sicilian bandit named Salvatore Guiliano back with him to America. But Guiliano is a man entwined in a bloody web of violence and vendettas. In Sicily, Guiliano is a modern day Robin Hood who has defied corruption—and defied the Cosa Nostra. Now, in the land of mist-shrouded mountains and ancient ruins, Michael Corleone's fate is entwined with the dangerous legend of Salvatore Guiliano: warrior, lover, and the ultimate Siciliano. Praise for The Sicilian “Puzo is a master storyteller.”—USA Today “The Balzac of the mafia.”—Time “An accomplished and imaginative writer.”—Los Angeles Times
Midnight In Sicily
Author: Peter Robb
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466861290
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily. South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. Peter Robb lived in southern Italy for over fourteen years and recounts its sensuous pleasures, its literature, politics, art, and crimes.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466861290
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily. South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. Peter Robb lived in southern Italy for over fourteen years and recounts its sensuous pleasures, its literature, politics, art, and crimes.
Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia
Author: John Dickie
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466893052
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
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.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466893052
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
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.
Sicilian Lives
Author: Danilo Dolci
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0394749383
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
When Danilo Docli, peace worker, organizer, educator, first arrived in 1952 in Trappeto, a village of peasants and fishermen in western Sicily, there were no streets, just mud and dust, not a single drugstore, not even a sewer. (In fact, the local dialect didn’t even have a word for sewer.) Like other Sicilians, the villagers, seen by many Italians as “bandits,” “dirt-eaters,” and “savages,” had, in effect, been mute for centuries. Dolci’s years of work broke this silence. The result is Sicilian Lives, a book which reveals the intimate experiences and perceptions of a wide range of Sicilians, rural and urban, through voices that are sometimes frightening, but always fascinating and unexpected. Danilo Dolci has collected a rich panorama of voices—the eloquent testimony of Sicilians who, at last, are speaking out to penetrate the most profound dilemmas of an impoverished land. With a foreword by John Berger
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0394749383
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
When Danilo Docli, peace worker, organizer, educator, first arrived in 1952 in Trappeto, a village of peasants and fishermen in western Sicily, there were no streets, just mud and dust, not a single drugstore, not even a sewer. (In fact, the local dialect didn’t even have a word for sewer.) Like other Sicilians, the villagers, seen by many Italians as “bandits,” “dirt-eaters,” and “savages,” had, in effect, been mute for centuries. Dolci’s years of work broke this silence. The result is Sicilian Lives, a book which reveals the intimate experiences and perceptions of a wide range of Sicilians, rural and urban, through voices that are sometimes frightening, but always fascinating and unexpected. Danilo Dolci has collected a rich panorama of voices—the eloquent testimony of Sicilians who, at last, are speaking out to penetrate the most profound dilemmas of an impoverished land. With a foreword by John Berger
Sicily
Author: Sandra Benjamin
Publisher: Steerforth
ISBN: 1586421816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614
Book Description
Take a tour through the Mediterranean’s largest island in this fascinating history of Sicily for armchair travelers, history buffs, and anyone planning their next trip to Italy. PLUS: Includes Sicily travel guide resources like maps, pronunciation keys, and suggestions for further reading! The emigration of people from Sicily often overshadows the importance of the people who immigrated to its shores throughout the centuries. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy—and countless others—have all held sway and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. Moreover, Sicily’s character has been shaped by what has passed it by. Events that affected Europe, namely the Crusades and Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, had little influence on Italy’s most famous island. A fascinating history of Sicily for the general reader, this book examines how location turned this charming Mediterranean island into the epicenter of major historical conquests, cultures, and more. Complete with maps, biographical notes, suggestions for further reading, a glossary, and pronunciation keys, this is at once a useful travel guide and an informative, entertaining exploration of the island’s remarkable history.
Publisher: Steerforth
ISBN: 1586421816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614
Book Description
Take a tour through the Mediterranean’s largest island in this fascinating history of Sicily for armchair travelers, history buffs, and anyone planning their next trip to Italy. PLUS: Includes Sicily travel guide resources like maps, pronunciation keys, and suggestions for further reading! The emigration of people from Sicily often overshadows the importance of the people who immigrated to its shores throughout the centuries. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy—and countless others—have all held sway and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. Moreover, Sicily’s character has been shaped by what has passed it by. Events that affected Europe, namely the Crusades and Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, had little influence on Italy’s most famous island. A fascinating history of Sicily for the general reader, this book examines how location turned this charming Mediterranean island into the epicenter of major historical conquests, cultures, and more. Complete with maps, biographical notes, suggestions for further reading, a glossary, and pronunciation keys, this is at once a useful travel guide and an informative, entertaining exploration of the island’s remarkable history.
Sicilian Odyssey
Author: Francine Prose
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1426209088
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
A blending of art and cultural criticism, travel writing, and personal narrative, Sicilian Odyssey is Francine Prose's imaginative consideration of the diverse cultural legacies found juxtaposed and entangled on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. She writes of the intensity of Sicily, the "commitment to the extreme," where the history is more colorful, the sun hotter, the cooking earthier, the violence more horrific, the carnival more raucous, the politics more Byzantine than other places on Earth, and how much the island can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence and life over death. Prose examines architectural sites and objects and looks at the ways in which myth and actuality converge. Exploring the intact and beautiful Greek amphitheaters at Siracusa and Taormina, the cathedral at Monreale, the Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina, and some of the masterpieces of the Baroque scattered throughout the island, Prose focuses her keen insight to imagine them in their own time, to examine the evolution and decline of the cultures that produced them, and to deconstruct powerful responses each evokes in her.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1426209088
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
A blending of art and cultural criticism, travel writing, and personal narrative, Sicilian Odyssey is Francine Prose's imaginative consideration of the diverse cultural legacies found juxtaposed and entangled on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. She writes of the intensity of Sicily, the "commitment to the extreme," where the history is more colorful, the sun hotter, the cooking earthier, the violence more horrific, the carnival more raucous, the politics more Byzantine than other places on Earth, and how much the island can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence and life over death. Prose examines architectural sites and objects and looks at the ways in which myth and actuality converge. Exploring the intact and beautiful Greek amphitheaters at Siracusa and Taormina, the cathedral at Monreale, the Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina, and some of the masterpieces of the Baroque scattered throughout the island, Prose focuses her keen insight to imagine them in their own time, to examine the evolution and decline of the cultures that produced them, and to deconstruct powerful responses each evokes in her.
The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife
Author: Veronica Di Grigoli
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781514802250
Category : Man-woman relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
When career-girl Veronica flies to Sicily for a friend's wedding, she accidentally falls in love with one of the groom's three-hundred cousins. A year later she has given up her job, house and friends, and is planning her own wedding with her Latin Lover in the shimmering heat of Sicily.
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781514802250
Category : Man-woman relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
When career-girl Veronica flies to Sicily for a friend's wedding, she accidentally falls in love with one of the groom's three-hundred cousins. A year later she has given up her job, house and friends, and is planning her own wedding with her Latin Lover in the shimmering heat of Sicily.
Rebels and Mafiosi
Author: James Fentress
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
For centuries, Sicilian "men of honor" have fought the controls of government. Between 1820 and 1860, rebellions shook the island as these men joined with Sicily's intellectuals in the struggle for independence from the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples. This lively account—the first to locate the emergence and evolution of the mafia in historical perspective—describes how those rebellions led to the birth of the modern mafia and traces the increasing influence of organized crime on the island. The alliance between two classes of Sicilians, James Fentress shows, made possible both the revolution and the mafia. Militancy in the ranks of the revolution taught men of honor how to organize politically. Communities then resisted the demands of central government by devising alternative controls through a network of local groups—the mafia cosche.Fentress tells his operatic story of honor and crime from the viewpoint of the Sicilians, and in particular of the great city of Palermo—from Garibaldi's historic arrival in 1860 to the spectacular mafia trials around the turn of the century. Drawing on police archives, trial records, contemporary journalism, and government reports, he describes how enduring political power plus a (richly deserved) reputation for violence helped the mafia secure covert relationships with groups that publicly denounced them. These contacts still protect today's mafiosi from Rome's efforts to eradicate the organization. The history of the mafia is indeed, Fentress shows, the history of Sicily.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
For centuries, Sicilian "men of honor" have fought the controls of government. Between 1820 and 1860, rebellions shook the island as these men joined with Sicily's intellectuals in the struggle for independence from the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples. This lively account—the first to locate the emergence and evolution of the mafia in historical perspective—describes how those rebellions led to the birth of the modern mafia and traces the increasing influence of organized crime on the island. The alliance between two classes of Sicilians, James Fentress shows, made possible both the revolution and the mafia. Militancy in the ranks of the revolution taught men of honor how to organize politically. Communities then resisted the demands of central government by devising alternative controls through a network of local groups—the mafia cosche.Fentress tells his operatic story of honor and crime from the viewpoint of the Sicilians, and in particular of the great city of Palermo—from Garibaldi's historic arrival in 1860 to the spectacular mafia trials around the turn of the century. Drawing on police archives, trial records, contemporary journalism, and government reports, he describes how enduring political power plus a (richly deserved) reputation for violence helped the mafia secure covert relationships with groups that publicly denounced them. These contacts still protect today's mafiosi from Rome's efforts to eradicate the organization. The history of the mafia is indeed, Fentress shows, the history of Sicily.