Blood Brotherhoods (156 page)
Read Blood Brotherhoods Online
Authors: John Dickie
PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.
I. F. STONE, proprietor of
I. F. Stone’s Weekly
, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published
The Trial of Socrates
, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.
BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of
The Washington Post
. It was Ben who gave the
Post
the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.
ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.
• • •
For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by
The Washington Post
as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.
Peter Osnos,
Founder and Editor-at-Large
Table of Contents
The structure of the ’ndrangheta
1. How to extract gold from fleas
2. Co-managing crime
3. The redemption of the camorra
4. Uncle Peppe’s stuff: The camorra cashes in
5. Spanishry: The first battle against the camorra
PART II: GETTING TO KNOW THE MAFIA
6. Rebels in corduroy
7. The benign mafia
8. A sect with a life of its own: The mafia’s rituals discovered
9. Double vendetta
PART III: THE NEW CRIMINAL NORMALITY
10. Born delinquents: Science and the mob
11. An audience of hoods
12. The slack society
PART IV: THE ’NDRANGHETA EMERGES
13. Harsh mountain
14. The tree of knowledge
15. Darkest Africo
16. The King of Aspromonte
17. Bankers and Men of Honour
18. Floriopolis
19. Four trials and a funeral
20. The ‘high’ camorra
21. The camorra in straw-yellow gloves
22. The criminal Atlantic
23. Gennaro Abbatemaggio: Genialoid
24. The strange death of the Honoured Society
25. Sicily: The last struggle with the mafia
26. Campania: Buffalo soldiers
27. Calabria: The flying boss of Antonimina
28. Calabria: What does not kill me makes me stronger
29. Calabria: A clever, forceful and wary woman
30. Campania: The Fascist Vito Genovese
31. Sicily: The slimy octopus
32. Master Joe dances a tarantella
33. Liberation
Map section appears between pages 284 and 285
34. Sicily: Banditry, land and politics
35. Sicily: In the Name of the Law
36. Calabria: The last romantic bandit
37. Naples: Puppets and puppeteers
38. Gangsterismo
39. The Monster of Presinaci
40. Mars attacks!
41. The President of Potato Prices (and his widow)
PART IX: THE MAFIAS’ ECONOMIC MIRACLE
42. King Concrete
43. Gangsters and blondes
44. Cosa Nostra: Untouchables no more
45. Mafia diaspora
46. The mafia-isation of the camorra
47. The mushroom-pickers of Montalto
48. Mafiosi on the barricades
49. The kidnapping industry
50. The Most Holy Mother and the First ’Ndrangheta War
51. A brief history of junk
52. Mr Champagne: Heroin broker
53. The Transatlantic Syndicate
54. The Professor
55. Blood orgy
56. The New Family: A group portrait
57. Catastrophe economy
58. The Magliana Band and the Sacred United Crown
PART XI: MARTYRS AND PENITENTS
59. Mafia terror
60. The fatal combination
61. Doilies and drugs
62. Walking cadavers
63. The capital of the anti-mafia
64. The rule of non-law
65. ’U maxi
66. One step forward, three steps back
67. Falcone goes to Rome
PART XII: THE FALL OF THE FIRST REPUBLIC
68. Sacrifice
69. The collapse of the old order
70. Negotiating by bomb: Birth of the Second Republic
PART XIII: THE SECOND REPUBLIC AND THE MAFIAS
71. Cosa Nostra: The head of the Medusa
72. Camorra: A geography of the underworld
73. Camorra: An Italian Chernobyl
74. Gomorrah
75. ’Ndrangheta: Snowstorm
76. ’Ndrangheta: The Crime
77. Welcome to the grey zone