The heir to legendary Mafia patriarch Joseph Bonanno describes the eclipse of a once-formidable criminal empire, with buffeting verbiage but only moderate amounts of candor. Bonanno begins with his 1956 wedding to a Profaci Family daughter, then goes on to detail the disastrous Appalachin conclave (which informed the general public of the Mob’s existence), the fraying of the “Commission” that had long maintained peace and order, and the betrayals and factional confusion that allegedly culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy. His first-person account of secret criminal history is badly undermined by poor editing. Flabby, repetitive writing and clichÇd phrases abound, as does vagueness regarding the realities of Mob criminality. Endless musings about long-dead codes of loyalty and respect annoy in contrast with the dearth of specific detail regarding Mob violence and business influence during this era . The book thus resembles a bowdlerized retelling of The Godfather, with very little of the gritty immediacy one finds in such studies as Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy. It’s not without merit, though; Bonanno profiles many major figures in the Five Families, clarifying both their ties to infamous predecessors such as Luciano and Anastasia, and their roles in the pyrrhic wars that, along with increased federal scrutiny in the decade following Kennedy’s death, essentially doomed the classical model of the American Mafia. The book’s best moments come near the end, when Bonanno convincingly portrays rogue FBI agents from the infamous CoIntelPro, whose efforts to “get the Mob” included bombings and witness intimidation, and who ultimately secured the author a long prison term resulting from a credit card “misunderstanding.” His jail experience yields one red-hot revelation: the confession of the alleged 11/22/63 triggerman, a Chicago Mob stalwart named Johnny Roselli. Given Bonanno’s knowledge of hidden Mafia history, one wishes his literary handlers had been less hasty in rushing a flawed book into the mob-opera marketplace. ($100,000 ad/promo; TV rights to Showtime; author tour)
Pub Date: May 25, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20388-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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