Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (Studies in Crime and Public Policy)

This is a great sociological work on the mafia. Letizia Paoli is an established academic criminologist. People bashing it because they expect to read The Godfather or Joe Pileggi's Wise Guys just demonstrate how ignorance is not bliss, but it is a curse

Who knew it was possible to take a topic like the Italian Mafia and make it so boring as to be a cure for insomnia. I recommend finding another book if you're looking for a quick overview of the topic. This author, while he certainly knows his stuff, and has done his research, sucks the joy from the reader's soul with his overly long, overly complicated sentence structure and vocabulary. In short, its an academic trying really hard to impress you by how much he sounds like an academic.

It is a good book very informative. I found myself skimming throught it though. There is no real story line just information. It didn't have my full attention. It just wasn't for me.

Cosa Nostra, meaning "this thing of ours", is a secret society which is composed of mostly male members from Scilian background. Composed of about 100 families, the Cosa Nostra has been an organization originating from Italy that focuses on racketeering, political influence, and corruption. Omerta is a code of silence and secrecy that forbids Mafiosi from betraying their comrades to the authorities. The penalty for transgression is death, and relatives of the members may also be murdered. To become a member, one must partake in a ritual that very few have participated in. In this book, Letizia Paoli will take a look into the organized crime known as the Mafia. With real life accounts and stories told by the men themselves, this book gives the reader incredible knowledge of what it might have been like. I liked this book for a few reasons. One being that I have read many books about organized crime, but this one sticks out because it provides so much detail from actual former members. It reads a little slow, but that is mainly because it is non-fiction, therefore it's more describing events and facts, rather than building a story plot. Recommended for anyone interested in learning the background of organized crime, Italian style.