Born to the Mob: The True-Life Story of the Only Man to Work for All Five of New York's Mafia Families
Author: Frankie Saggio
Frankie Saggio reminisces about the era of true wise guys like his Uncle Philly -a contemporary of Al Capone. After all, it was Frankie's uncle who "taught him the value of a dollar and how to steal it from someone else." Uncle Philly was from a day when being in a mafia family meant being bound by blood and honor, not like modern day families whose only concern is money. For Frankie, the only way to avoid the modern mob treachery is to avoid getting involved with any single mob family, working "freelance" for all five. Frankie can do this because he is one of the biggest earners in the business, pulling down millions and kicking a share upstairs to the bosses. Though he fights the decision, Frankie is tied by blood to the Bonanno family, Uncle Philly's family, and current home to Philly's murderer. Soon after joining the Bonannos, Frankie narrowly escapes an assassination attempt and is busted for a major scam. With little choice, and even less loyalty to the Bonannos, Frankie turns himself over to the Feds on the one condition that he will tell the feds everything, but will not squeal on his own relatives.
Publishers Weekly
The apparently insatiable public appetite for insider stories from the world of organized crime gives Saggio's dramatized third-person narrative, co-written with true-crime veteran Rosen (Lobster Boy), a built-in audience, but don't expect another Wiseguy or Donnie Brasco. Saggio, a federally protected witness following his cooperation against his former partners in crime, relates a familiar, clich d tale without offering much new. While his schemes involved mail fraud scams and stock manipulation rather than violence, more detailed and better-written accounts of mob infiltration of Wall Street have appeared recently (e.g., Gary Weiss's Born to Steal and Salvatore Lauria's The Scorpion and the Frog). Purple prose ("With a crackle of gears, the bus descended to hell") mingled with blatant errors (the underboss, not the capo, is "one rung below boss"; Rudy Giuliani never prosecuted John Gotti) and "revelations" that are not news (Carmine Galante's assassins have been publicly named before) add up to a disappointing by-the-numbers story. The few touches of humor-Saggio refers to the mob's ruling body, the Commission, as the "Justice League" and compares his life to that of Harry Potter-don't make Saggio, who comes off here as greedy and conscienceless, any more endearing. Readers with a background in law enforcement will dispute Saggio's accusation that FBI undercover agent Joe Pistone was complicit in three murders and that the FBI let those hits go forward. (Mar. 11) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Saggio, now residing in an unknown location under the federal government's Witness Security Program, tells all in this interesting but unevenly written memoir of the Wiseguy life. Growing up under the wing of his uncle, "Philly Lucky" Giaccone (a member of the Bonanno crime family), Saggio was initiated early into the ways of the Mafia. When he was 17, Uncle Philly was killed, and Saggio became a "freelance" mobster, going on to work for all five of New York's crime families. Ultimately busted for his operation of a phony pay-phone scam, Saggio made a deal with the federal government to inform on the Mafia in which he had traveled so widely. The story is told in the third person, but large parts are made up of direct quotes from Saggio, often breaking the flow of the book and making it slightly disjointed. Not for the faint of heart, given the superfluous use of strong language, this is an optional purchase for the true-crime collections of large public libraries or wherever Mob tell-alls are popular.-Sarah Jent, Univ. of Louisville, KY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An organized-crime figure specializes in financial shenanigans as intricate as any imaginable. No goomba-come-lately, Saggio was a fourth-generation member of an extended Mafia family. Here, with his first-person account buttressed by crime journalist Rosen's narrative, Saggio explains why he chose to operate independently: "I didn't want anyone bustin' my balls. . . . If I wasn't with any crew, I could move around and not answer to anyone." He made money and paid the vig to whoever controlled the turf-and what a turf it was, from drugs to cigarettes to car thefts, but most fascinatingly on Wall Street, where Saggio figured out how to "get a hook into a firm, bring the wiseguys in, and the exploit the situation." This involved IPO scams like dumping stocks after an early purchase. "I had a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank and a vice president at European American Bank who would handle my accounts and transactions personally," the mobster boasts; Paine Webber and Shearson Lehman also figured in the equation. But Saggio's independence required an exquisite appreciation of balance and a knowledge of who was who within the five New York crime families. ("Patty and his brother Joey were with Roy DeMeo, who ran a crew for Nino Gaggi, a skipper with the Gambinos.") His connections were always in flux-now with the Columbos, now with the Luccheses, the Genoveses, the Bonannos, the Gambinos-and when Saggio eventually ran afoul of the truly nasty Tommy D., he turned to the witness protection program, which comes across as a deeply amateurish operation. The everyday lawlessness and violence here is omnipresent; there's no running, no hiding, no avenue of escape from Mob influence, andlaw-abiding readers may feel as though a rasp is being drawn across their foreheads. If what Saggio says is true, and there's little reason to believe it's not, readers are advised to think twice before their next flutter on an IPO.
Go to: The Dependent Personality or Miracle Touch
Mr. Lincoln Goes to War
Author: William Marvel
This exciting work of groundbreaking history investigates the mystery of how the Civil War began, reconsidering the big question: Was it inevitable? Marvel vividly depicts President Lincoln's first year in office, from his inauguration through the rising crisis of secession and the first several months of the war. Drawing on original sources and examining previously overlooked factors, Marvel leads the reader inexorably to the conclusion that Lincoln not only missed opportunities to avoid war but actually fanned the flames - and often acted unconstitutionally in prosecuting the war once it had begun. The story unfolds with Marvel's keen eye for the telling detail, on the battlefield as well as in the White House. This is revisionist history at its best and necessary reading for Civil War and Lincoln devotees alike.
Publishers Weekly
Establishing slavery as the Civil War's central issue has fostered an acceptance of the conflict's inevitability among academic and popular historians alike. Marvel, author of several prize-winning books on the Civil War (Lee's Last Retreat, etc.), combines an iconoclastic approach with extensive research to challenge this conventional wisdom. Focusing on the North's road to war in 1861, he argues that Abraham Lincoln made armed force a first choice, rather than a last resort, in addressing the Union's breakup. While conceding the complex problems Lincoln faced, and the corresponding limitations on his options, Marvel describes the president's course of action as "destructive and unimaginative." The confrontation at Fort Sumter ended any chance of avoiding conflict, he writes, and the North's amateurish conduct of initial military operations, culminating in the defeats at Bull Run, Wilson's Creek and Ball's Bluff, encouraged an emerging Confederacy's belief that war was its best option. More generally, Lincoln's early and comprehensive infringement of such constitutional rights as habeas corpus set dangerous precedents for future autocratic executives. Marvel's characterization of Lincoln as a victim of tunnel vision, who launched a war without considering how devastating it might become, incorporates a certain present-mindedness. His willingness to consider the positive prospects of accepting secession is informed by a barely concealed subtext: the existence of the United States as we know it has not been an unmixed blessing. This well-constructed, comprehensively documented revisionist exercise merits consideration and reflection. Drawings, maps, halftones. (May 10) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Historian Marvel (Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox) insists that the positive outcome of the Civil War and the deification of Lincoln as a great war leader have obscured many of the actual facts. He offers an alternate historical view, arguing that Lincoln misread the political situation during the secession winter preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, mishandled the crisis at the fort, abused the power of his office, trampled on civil liberties and democratic processes to keep Maryland and Missouri in the Union, and stumbled through cabinet decisions about how to prosecute the war. In grim and vivid detail, he recounts the military blundering that made the war more terrible than it might have been were another man in Lincoln's position. Marvel writes with authority and vigor in relating military actions but relies on conjecture in supposing political alignments and peaceful resolutions had Lincoln not been so aggressive and unyielding in insisting the Union not disassemble. Nonetheless, this provocative book will fuel the current raging debates on presidential powers, leadership, the causes and conduct of the Civil War, and the possibilities of peace. Highly recommended.-Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The Railsplitter as tyrant, warmonger and Machiavellian strategist. Did Lincoln cause the Civil War? Historian Marvel (The Monitor Chronicles, 2000, etc.) says yes, but then adds a qualification or two. Certainly, he writes, Lincoln could have taken the advice of Cabinet members, newspaper editors and plenty of Northern voters by allowing the South to secede, in which case, Marvel ventures, slavery would have at least been a localized problem, likely to disappear in time. Lincoln, however, "eschewed diplomacy" and replied to the capture of Fort Sumter-which, Lincoln's secret agents had already told him, was inevitably to fall to the South-by raising an army and threatening invasion. He had already hinted at such intentions in his inaugural speech, knowing that trouble was on the way; indeed, as Marvel writes, Sumter, which supposedly touched off the war, was but the latest of many federal installations that the secessionists had taken, to which then-President James Buchanan had responded by not doing anything. Any attempt to enforce federal law in the South, Lincoln's advisors told him, "would precipitate war." By Marvel's account, Lincoln welcomed the prospect, for the Union needed a renewed forging of bonds and federal authority needed to be extended over states' rights-an argument still played out in the Capitol today. In any event, Marvel argues, Lincoln willingly violated the Constitution to preserve the Union by, for one thing, suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and he came very close to establishing a dictatorship (of the Roman, not Nazi, variety). "Lincoln gradually arrogated so much authority to his office that his own dominant party dared not pass that power on to a member ofthe opposition," Marvel notes, so that Republicans raced to strip away presidential powers when Democrat Andrew Johnson took office after Lincoln's assassination. Sure to touch off discussion, if not controversy, in professional circles; readers with a penchant for iconoclasm will want to have a look, too.
Table of Contents:
ContentsList of Illustrations and Maps ix
Preface xiii
Part I WE CANNOT SEPARATE
1. Songs for a Prelude 3
2. Flags in Mottoed Pageantry 36
3. The Banner at Daybreak 63
Part II AND NOW THE STORM-BLAST CAME
4. Behold the Silvery River 93
5. Where Ignorant Armies Clash 120
6. The Crimson Corse of Lyon 155
Part III THE ERA OF SUSPICION
7. The Despot's Heel 185
8. By Cliffs Potomac Cleft 216
9. Shovel Them Under and Let Me Work 247
Epilogue 281
Appendix 1: Orders of Battle 289
Appendix 2: Biographical Sketches 292
Notes 304
Bibliography 340
Acknowledgments 363
Index 368
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