Mafia dynasty

by John H. Davis

Among the thousands of Italian immigrants to arrive in New York City in the 1920s were the young Carlo Gambino and John Joseph Gotti. One was a rising star in the Sicilian "Honored Society," the other was a poor laborer. While John Joseph Gotti and thousands of poveracci like him plugged away at backbreaking, deadend jobs, slick Sicilian hotshots plunged into the illegal liquor business, setting up stills, warehouses, distribution lines, and trucking companies. They. Recruited battalions of bootleggers and opened up hundreds of speakeasies all over New York. It was this frenzied competition, writes Davis, that established the foundations for the five Mafia families that to this day run the New York underworld. And the richest and biggest of them all is the Gambino crime family. Davis depicts the deals that went into the creation of this vast enterprise, a mysterious world of blood oaths, shifting alliances, long-lasting feuds, and. Larger-than-life - or death - personalities: Salvatore