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The autobiography of a member of Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s Mafia family. “The reader gets a real sense of code, of honor, courage and commitment” (London TV). “I was born an outlaw in outlaw culture. I refused to be forced into the powerless class of the ordinary, law-abiding citizen. I always saw things from outside the box because I was born outside the box, so I was free to think for myself.” Born in 1942, Salvatore “Sal” Lucania was not only raised but educated by the streets of East Harlem. Dropping out of his Catholic high school at fifteen after punching out a priest, a formal education was not Sal’s future. As such, it would have been easy to fall into the trappings of “made man” status in the mafia, like his cousin Charles “Lucky” Luciano. But Sal had a different vision of the future, if he could just escape the confines of his neighborhood and defy the ways of the people in power: the bullies, the “ruling class,” local government corruption and his own mafia family culture—in order to create a different life than the one fate might have otherwise intended. The Gangster’s Cousin is a wonderfully different take on the usual Mafia story. Sal’s memoir takes the reader on a sometimes exciting, sometimes poignant, and often humorous adventure as he finds himself in unbelievable situations and meeting an array of unique and funny characters along the way. Follow Sal’s one-of-a-kind perspective and find out why he strives so hard to stay ahead of a different type of criminal class—the people who make the rules.
From Sicily to Elizabeth Street analyzes the relationship of environment to social behavior. It revises our understanding of the Italian-American family and challenges existing notions of the Italian immigrant experience by comparing everyday family and social life in the agrotowns of Sicily to life in a tenement neighborhood on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the century. Moving historical understanding beyond such labels as "uprooted" and "huddled masses," the book depicts the immigrant experience from the perspective of the immigrants themselves. It begins with a uniquely detailed description of the Sicilian backgrounds and moves on to recreate Elizabeth Street in lower Manhattan, a neighborhood inhabited by some 8,200 Italians. The author shows how the tightly knit conjugal family became less important in New York than in Sicily, while a wider association of kin groups became crucial to community life. Immigrants, who were mostly young people, began to rely more on their related peers for jobs and social activities and less on parents who remained behind. Interpreting their lives in America, immigrants abandoned some Sicilian ideals, while other customs, though Sicilian in origin, assumed new and distinctive forms as this first generation initiated the process of becoming Italian-American.
If you liked The Godfather and Goodfellas, you’ll love these three up-close-and-personal true accounts of gangsters and organized crime. THE RISE AND FALL OF A “CASINO” MOBSTER: The Tony Spilotro Story Through a Hitman’s Eyes by Frank Cullota and Dennis Griffin Bestselling “mob expert” Dennis Griffin and former mob enforcer and Spilotro confidant, Frank Cullota, tell the story of the Las Vegas gangster whose quest for power and lack of self-control with women cost the Mob its control of Vegas—and lost Tony his life. “Sets the record straight about Tony the man and Tony the mobster. It’s an eye-opener.”—Frank Calabrese, Junior, author of Operation Family Secrets SHOTS IN THE DARK: The Saga of Rocco Balliro by Daniel Zimmerman In 1963, Rocco Balliro and a pair of associates stormed an apartment in Boston and were immediately caught in a shootout with Boston police officers, waiting in ambush for him. It was a rescue mission that went downhill in a hurry, leaving his beloved girlfriend and her toddler son dead. “Fascinating . . . a real page-turner for Mob enthusiasts and organized crime history buffs.”—Dennis N. Griffin, bestselling author of The Rise and Fall Of A “Casino” Mobster THE GANGSTER’S COUSIN: Growing up in the Luciano Family by Salvatore Lucania Young Sal navigates the streets of Harlem, experiencing the inherent corruption of the US justice system and discovering the truth about the secret world of outlaw figures—like his cousin and namesake, Charles “Lucky” Luciano. “A wonderfully different take on the usual Mafia story . . . a sometimes exciting, sometimes poignant, and often humorous adventure.”—Thrive Global
Best Food Book of 2014 by The Atlantic Looking at the historic Italian American community of East Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, Simone Cinotto recreates the bustling world of Italian life in New York City and demonstrates how food was at the center of the lives of immigrants and their children. From generational conflicts resolved around the family table to a vibrant food-based economy of ethnic producers, importers, and restaurateurs, food was essential to the creation of an Italian American identity. Italian American foods offered not only sustenance but also powerful narratives of community and difference, tradition and innovation as immigrants made their way through a city divided by class conflict, ethnic hostility, and racialized inequalities. Drawing on a vast array of resources including fascinating, rarely explored primary documents and fresh approaches in the study of consumer culture, Cinotto argues that Italian immigrants created a distinctive culture of food as a symbolic response to the needs of immigrant life, from the struggle for personal and group identity to the pursuit of social and economic power. Adding a transnational dimension to the study of Italian American foodways, Cinotto recasts Italian American food culture as an American "invention" resonant with traces of tradition.
Finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction A memoir of astonishing delicacy and strength about race and physical beauty. Kym Ragusa’s stunningly beautiful, brilliant African American mother turned heads as she strolled the streets of West Harlem. Ragusa’s white, working-class, Sicilian American father, who grew up only a few streets away in Italian East Harlem, had never seen anything like her. At home, their families despaired at the match, while in the streets the couple faced taunting threats from a city still racially divided. From their volatile, short-lived pairing came a sensitive child with a filmmaker’s observant eye and the intangible gifts of an exceptional writer. Both Italian American and African American, she struggled to find a place for herself as she grew, and, in this book, she brings to life the two families and the warring, but ultimately similar, communities that defined her. Through the stories and memories of her maternal ancestors, Ragusa explores her black family’s history, from her great-great-great-great-grandmother, who escaped from slavery in the South, to her grandmother, a journalist for the society columns of black newspapers, to her glamorous mother, who became a fashion model in Europe. Entwined with these are the stories of Ragusa’s paternal ancestors: her iron-willed great-grandmother, who came to New York from a small village in the mountains of Calabria; her grandmother, the first to be born in America, who struggled to fit in both in her Italian community and later in the American suburbs; and, finally, Ragusa’s father, a Vietnam veteran. At the center of the memoir are her two powerful grandmothers, who gave her the love and stability to grow into her own skin. Eventually, their shared care for their granddaughter forced them to overcome their prejudices. East and West Harlem, the Bronx and suburban New Jersey, rent parties and religious feste, baked yams and baked ziti—all come vividly to life in Ragusa’s sensuous memories and lyrical prose, as she evokes the joy, the pain, and the inexhaustible richness of a racially and culturally mixed heritage.
Renowned today for his contribution to the rise of the modern European fairy tale, Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480–c. 1557) is particularly known for his dazzling anthology The Pleasant Nights. Originally published in Venice in 1550 and 1553, this collection features seventy-three folk stories, fables, jests, and pseudo-histories, including nine tales we might now designate for ‘mature readers’ and seventeen proto-fairy tales. Nearly all of these stories, including classics such as ‘Puss in Boots,’ made their first ever appearance in this collection; together, the tales comprise one of the most varied and engaging Renaissance miscellanies ever produced. Its appeal sustained it through twenty-six editions in the first sixty years. This full critical edition of The Pleasant Nights presents these stories in English for the first time in over a century. The text takes its inspiration from the celebrated Waters translation, which is entirely revised here to render it both more faithful to the original and more sparkishly idiomatic than ever before. The stories are accompanied by a rich sampling of illustrations, including originals from nineteenth-century English and French versions of the text. As a comprehensive critical and historical edition, these volumes contain far more information on the stories than can be found in any existing studies, literary histories, or Italian editions of the work. Donald Beecher provides a lengthy introduction discussing Straparola as an author, the nature of fairy tales and their passage through oral culture, and how this phenomenon provides a new reservoir of stories for literary adaptation. Moreover, the stories all feature extensive commentaries analysing not only their themes but also their fascinating provenances, drawing on thousands of analogue tales going back to ancient Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic stories. Immensely entertaining and readable, The Pleasant Nights will appeal to anyone interested in fairy tales, ancient stories, and folk creations. Such readers will also enjoy Beecher’s academically solid and erudite commentaries, which unfold in a manner as light and amusing as the stories themselves.
Urban realism in the tradition of E.L. Doctorow, William Kennedy, Philip Roth and Jimmy Breslin, "When Jack Was With Us" immerses the reader in neighborhood life in New York City from the late 1950's through the late 1960's. Unlike many other novels by Baby Boomers, this novel makes no attempt to sugarcoat or nostaligize; it presents life as the author saw it while growing up, in all its beauty and all its brutality. There is no single protagonist; a number of characters whose lives intertwine each seek to make the best out of their lives amid the rich and often volatile ethnic tapestry of New York, against the backdrop of social change as the novel moves from the somnolent 1950's through the turbulent 1960's. Each character struggles and finds his/her damnation or redemption amid a city that personifies a nation in flux. It is a "coming of age" not only for the characters but for the greater American collective psyche.
Before Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, there was the one-fingered, cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Had it not been for Morello, the world may never have heard of 'men of honour', the code of omertaor Mafia wars. This explosive book tells the story of the first family of New York, and how this extended close-knit clan of racketeers and murderers left the backwaters of Sicily to successfully establish themselves as the founding godfathers of the New World. First Family will explain in thrilling, characterful detail how the American Mafia established itself so successfully. Combining strong narrative and raw violence - set against the raucous bustle of early twentieth-century New York, and the impoverished rural life of nineteenth-century Sicily - this impeccably researched, groundbreaking study of a crucial period of American history is a compelling portrait of the early years of organised crime.
The Mafia has maintained an enduring hold on the American cultural imagination--even as it continues to wrongly color our real-life perception of Italian Americans. Journalist and cultural critic De Stefano takes a look at the origins and prevalence of the Mafia mythos in America. Beginning with a consideration of Italian emigration in the early twentieth century and the fear and prejudice--among both Americans and Italians--that informed our earliest conception of what was the largest immigrant group to enter the United States, De Stefano explores how these impressions laid the groundwork for the images so familiar to us today and uses them to illuminate and explore the variety and allure of Mafia stories. At the same time, he addresses the lingering power of the goodfella cliché, which makes it all but impossible to green-light a project about the Italian American experience not set in gangland.--From publisher description.