The Last Struggle with the Mafia PDF Download

Author: Cesare Mori
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Author: Cesare Mori
Publisher: Black House Publishing
ISBN: 9781910881385
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Here is the story, in his own words, of how Cesare Mori, with the support of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, took on the might of the Sicilian Mafia. It was a struggle that earned Mori much criticism of his methods from the liberal media, but much praise not only from Mussolini himself but from the people of Sicily who had for decades lived in fear of this criminal secret society which had become the scourge of ordinary Sicilians. There was nothing of a flashy nature about the Mafia in Sicily. Operating in a non-industrialised society, the Mafioso in Sicily made their wealth not from drugs, prostitution and gambling, but from the theft of horses and livestock, kidnapping, and the extortion of money from simple town and country folk and large landowners alike, and like their American colleagues the Sicilian Mafia enforced their rule through violence and murder. However, with the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, the U.S. Military enlisted the help of the American Mafia in re-establishing Mafia activity in Sicily, with the aim of undermining Fascist rule - a tactic that not only had far reaching consequences for Sicily, but for the whole of Italy for decades to come. In another time or place Cesare Mori's struggle against the Mafia would have been remembered alongside Elliott Ness, but it is now a story largely forgotten, because, like much else, it was an achievement of the Mussolini era, and as such is to be written out of history. Cesare Mori's story of his struggle against the Mafia not only deserves to be told, but it provides an insight into Sicilian society and a rural way of life that has for the most part now disappeared.

Author: Leoluca Orlando
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 159403401X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Growing up in an aristocratic family that seems almost to have stepped out of the pages of The Leopard, Leoluca Orlando entered law and politics in the late 1970s as one of the young idealists identified with the Catholic Church who were challenging the Mafia’s control of Sicilian life. At about the same moment, life in Sicily was becoming more perilous. As if the “old” Mafia had not been bad enough, a new and particularly vicious Mafia sect based in the town of Corleone was murdering its way to power. Fueled by profits from the international heroin trade, this mafia gansteristica made Sicily into an Italian Lebanon and filled the international press with pictures of bloody bodies—those of Mafia rivals as well as police and government law enforcement officials. One of the figures most prominently identified with Italy’s offensive against the Mafia, Orlando has endured repeated assassination attempts and even today travels with a bodyguard. Fighting the Mafia is his dramatic tale of witness and survival, of his effort to expose Mafia infiltration into the highest levels of Italian life and politics, and of the movements he helped to build—in schools and churches and at the ballot box—to recapture Sicilian culture and inspire a renaissance of democracy.

Author: Peter T. Schneider
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520929497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Reversible Destiny traces the history of the Sicilian mafia to its nineteenth-century roots and examines its late twentieth-century involvement in urban real estate and construction as well as drugs. Based on research in the regional capital of Palermo, this book suggests lessons regarding secretive organized crime: its capacity to reproduce a subculture of violence through time, its acquisition of a dense connective web of political and financial protectors during the Cold War era, and the sad reality that repressing it easily risks harming vulnerable people and communities. Charting the efforts of both the judiciary and a citizen's social movement to reverse the mafia's economic, political, and cultural power, the authors establish a framework for understanding both the difficulties and the accomplishments of Sicily's multifaceted antimafia efforts.

Author: Monte S. Finkelstein
Publisher: Lehigh University Press
ISBN: 9780934223515
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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This study examines the separatist movement's origins, its leaders and followers, the actions in which separatists engaged to establish a free Sicily, the factors that caused the movement's demise, and its legacy. This book also examines the relationship of the separatist movement to the United States, Great Britain, and the Sicilian mafia.

Author: John Dickie
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466893052
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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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.

Author: Paul Lieberman
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1250020166
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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"Read this man's book." --James Ellroy Gangster Squad presents a harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels—the real events behind the blockbuster Warner Brothers film starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. GANGSTER SQUAD chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums from Los Angeles after WWII. In 1946, the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Sgt. Jack O'Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick. About all they had in common was their obsession. So O'Mara set a trap to prove Mickey was a killer. And Wooters formed an alliance with Mickey's budding rival, Jack "The Enforcer" Whalen. Two cops -- two hoodlums. Their fates collided in the closing days of the 1950s, when late one night "The Enforcer" confronted Mickey and his crew. The aftermath would shake both LA's mob and police department, and signal the end of a defining era in the city's history. Warner Brothers developed the film Gangster Squad based on the research award-winning journalist Paul Lieberman conducted for this book, which reveals the unbelievable true stories behind the film. He spent more than a decade tracking down and interviewing surviving members of the real police unit as well as families and associates of the mobsters they pursued. Gangster Squad is a tour-de-force narrative reminiscent of LA Confidential.

Author: Phil Leonetti
Publisher: Running Press Adult
ISBN: 0762456000
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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MONEY, MURDER, AND MACHIAVELLIAN MAYHEM . . . CONTAINS A NEW EPILOGUE Mafia Prince is the first person account of one of the most brutal eras in Mafia history -- "Little Nicky" Scarfo's reign as boss of the Philadelphia family in the 1980s -- written by Scarfo's underboss and nephew, "Crazy Phil" Leonetti. The youngest-ever underboss at the age of 33, Leonetti was at the crux of the violent breakup of the traditional American Mafia in the 1980s when he infiltrated Atlantic City after gambling was legalized, and later turned state's evidence against his own. His testimony led directly to the convictions of dozens of high-ranking men including John Gotti, Vincent Gigante, and the downfall of his own uncle, Nick Scarfo -- sparking the beginning of the end of La Cosa Nostra (the insiders' term for the Mafia, translated as "This Thing of Ours").

Author: Ralph Blumenthal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780747503798
Category : Drug traffic
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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The dramatic story of the most successful criminal investigation ever, in which the FBI dealt a blow to the Sicilian Mafia and its worldwide drug trade. A pair of agents trace clues worldwide to uncover a lucrative heroin racket, worth more than a billion dollars.

Author: Alexander Stille
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679768637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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In 1992 Italy was convulsed by two brazen Mafia assassinations of high-ranking officials. The latest "excellent cadavers" were Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the Sicilian magistrates who had been the Cosa Nostra's most implacable enemies. Yet in the aftermath of the murders, hundreds of "men of honor" were arrested and the government that ad protected them for nearly half a century was at last driven from office. This is the story that Stille tells with such insight and immediacy in Excellent Cadavers. Combining a profound understanding of his doomed heroes with and unprecedented look into the Mafia's stringent codes and murderous rivalries, he gives us a book that has the power of a great work of history and the suspense of a true thriller. "Riveting...a well-paced and highly informative account stocked with well-drawn characters."--Philadelphia Inquirer "Masterful...[Stille] delivers a stiletto-sharp portrait of the bloodthirsty Sicilian mafia."--Business Week