Posted by Book Review By Dan Barry on 1/27/2004, 11:26 am BOOK REVIEW DESK AMERICAN MAFIA Thomas Reppetto, the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, has set out to educate us on what we thought we knew. ''American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power'' is a smart, reasoned study of the ascendancy of Italian-American organized crime that begins with a few bad guys sprinkled among the waves of honorable Italian immigrants in the late 19th century and ends with the Kefauver Committee hearings in the early 1950's, which exposed the mob's broad influence in major American cities. Though the bookshelves cry for mercy under the weight of Mafia literature, Reppetto's book earns its place among the best, in part because he rarely lapses into belly-full-of-lead prose. And by narrowing his focus, he brings fresh context to a familiar story worth retelling: how Italian-American gangs across the country formed a crime organization that, for all the corporate spin about code and honor, was designed to maximize profit and minimize any mayhem that might disrupt the flow of said profit. ''They parceled out territories and adopted rules to provide for the arbitration of disputes,'' Reppetto writes. ''In the mold of Rockefeller or Morgan, they formed syndicates to end wasteful competition. Like other businessmen, they established national associations to promote common interests. When they passed from the scene, their organizations remained, lasting to the present.'' Reppetto strains to make some obvious points: that organized crime has always been a multiethnic endeavor in the United States; that the great majority of Italian-Americans are law-abiding; that the most hard-nosed gangbusters have included the likes of Frank Dimaio, a heroic undercover agent, and Giuseppe Petrosino, a New York police officer who was murdered for his doggedness. If his tone seems personal at times, he might have reason. Reppetto was once the Chicago Police Department's commander of detectives, and he notes that his father was a bootlegger and bookmaker who had to do business with the Chicago mob. But why did the Italian-American form of organized crime come to dominate? Why did the Owney Maddens and Meyer Lanskys of the underworld become subordinate to the Lucky Lucianos? Reppetto explains that in addition to certain serendipitous factors -- like the bizarre refusal of J. Edgar Hoover even to acknowledge the existence of organized crime -- Italian-American gangs were more disciplined than other ethnic gangs and better organized than their law-enforcement adversaries. He recounts, for example, how gangsters from several cities gathered in 1929 for a kind of illegal-trade convention in Atlantic City, where topics of discussion included the latest bootlegging developments and the free-spirited management style of a confrere, Al Capone. It seems that the St. Valentine's Day slaughter of seven men in a Chicago garage, including an optometrist who just liked to hang around with hoods, had caused another public outcry -- and public outcries are never good for business. The group recommended that Capone go away for a while. The meeting is remarkable in at least three respects: that gangsters gathered for a common interest, that they dared to tell the excitable Capone to take one for the team and that Capone consented to being set up. He drove to Philadelphia, got arrested by mob-friendly detectives, pleaded guilty to minor gun charges and was sentenced to a year in jail. As Reppetto wryly notes, Capone began serving his time ''a mere 16 hours after setting foot in the City of Brotherly Love.'' Many at that Atlantic City gathering were non-Italian. By the mid-1930's, however, Italian-American gangsters had emerged as visionaries, creating what came to be known as the commission: a kind of National League in which the managers of nine teams, including ones from each of the five New York mob families, conferred on how best to run their pastime. While Italian-American mobsters did not suddenly shun Lansky, Abner (Longy) Zwillman and other non-Italians -- that would not have been a wise business decision -- there was no doubt now about who was in charge. The commission issued edicts against killing police officers and reporters, for example, as well as against violence in resort areas where the mob had business interests. Reppetto strives to clear away the romantic muck that often shrouds the history of the mob. There was never any Mr. Big, he says, although he cites Johnny Torrio of Chicago and Charles (Lucky) Luciano and Frank Costello of New York -- along with Lansky and the infamous Arnold Rothstein -- as the men who brought a corporate sensibility to the mob. (His assessment of Capone, though, is curt: ''Any objective evaluation of the man as a gang leader would judge him an example of what not to do.'') And while the Mafia sometimes influenced the political process -- it essentially kidnapped Cicero, Ill. -- that influence was hardly a constant, he writes. The New York mob enjoyed a cozy relationship with Mayor William O'Dwyer in the late 1940's, but only after many years of being shut out by his predecessor, Fiorello La Guardia. Separating fact from fiction did not leave Reppetto wanting for material, however. He vividly describes the assassination of the New Orleans police chief in 1890 and the subsequent lynching and murder of alleged Mafiosi, which were punctuated by the mocking chants of vengeful rioters (''Who killa da chief, who killa da chief''). And his account of how a few overworked and neglected prostitutes brought down the mighty Luciano is delicious. Reppetto occasionally engages in long, confusing discussions of small-city events that do not inform the larger story. Over all, though, he has navigated a world of wacky nicknames and Machiavellian alliances -- of false romance and coldblooded greed -- to provide a lucid history of the American Mafia for those of us who would not know what else to say after greeting Sammy the Bull.
63.172.80.165
January 18, 2004, Sunday
Badfellas
By Dan Barry
A History of Its Rise to Power.
By Thomas Reppetto.
Illustrated. 318 pp. New York:
A John Macrae Book/
Henry Holt & Company. $26.
WE read the memoirs of the latest wiseguy to hear his bada-bing muse and talk of how ''The Sopranos'' gets it right. We may even refer by nickname to the informant who betrayed John Gotti: ''Sammy the Bull,'' we say, as if that would be our greeting if we saw the man at the Olive Garden. But can we explain the perverse heritage to which these men held claim? Do we understand how steeply the relevance of their world has declined?
Dan Barry is a reporter at The Times.
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