Book Review: The Five Families by Selwyn Raab

This was a very long and comprehensive book - a total history of the Mafia that stretches from Renaissance Sicily to about a decade ago.

With that in mind, I could go into all the things I learned and all the details I read...but that would probably create a post even longer than the book!

So instead, we'll keep it short today - this is a fascinating look at how and why Cosa Nostre was was formed, how the Mafia started in America (in New Orleans of all places, not New York!), why they went so long without any law enforcement intervention, how authorities were finally able to bring them down starting in the 80s, and what the remnants of the families are doing now. The focus of the book is on the Five Families in New York (the only part of the country allowed to have more than one family), although it touches on the rest of the country. There are great true-life characters here, like Lucky Luciano (who created the Five Families and the Commission) and John Gotti (plus another Mafia boss who spent most of his life pretending to be crazy so the authorities would lose his scent).

Those characters are great, but in a non-fiction book this length, there are just too many of them - it becomes very difficult to remember who is who at any given moment, and at times the piece starts reading like a textbook. Also, I don't know if reading this on a Kindle had anything to do with it, but I noticed a significant amount of spelling/grammar errors in the writing - not a deal-breaker, but surprising to see.

Overall, if you want to learn more about the Mafia...watch that Netflix documentary about the 80s. If you REALLY want to learn more about the Mafia, read this book - amazing story, but turns into a slog at times. Final score: seven out of ten hot dogs.