The First Family, Mike Dash
The First Family, Mike Dash
3 Rating(s)
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The First Family
Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia

Author: Mike Dash

Narrator: Lloyd James

Unabridged: 13 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/21/2009


Synopsis

Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.

In The First Family, Mike Dash tells the little known story of the Morello family. He follows the birth of the Mafia in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, from the wharves of New Orleans—where Morello himself disembarked in the United States—to the streets of Little Italy. Using previously untapped secret service archives, prison records, and interviews with surviving family members, Dash brings to life the remarkable villains and unusual heroes of the Mafia's early years, from the colorful members of the Morello family to Joseph Petrosino, an Italian cop with a thick Naples accent, and William Flynn, a dogged U.S. Secret Service agent, who banded together to bring down Morello.

More than just a pulse-quickening Mafia narrative, The First Family is the first authoritative account of a particularly crucial period in American history, in which the modern American underworld was born.

About Mike Dash

Mike Dash is a historian with an MA from Cambridge University and a PhD from the University of London. A former professional journalist with articles in numerous national newspapers and magazines, Dash is the author of seven books, including Satan's Circus, Thug, Batavia's Graveyard, and Tulipomania. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on October 21, 2014

The author did a great job of researching the origins of the Mafia & this is a great read for anyone who liked The Godfather or The Valachi Papers, which I do (both books & movies). I found a lot of names & situations that I recognized. Dash has 2 agendas in this history. The first he states from the......more

Goodreads review by Rose on October 25, 2009

The Mafia is one of those organizations that Hollywood and the media have turned into a household name. Its current public face is the fictional Tony Soprano. The closing years of the nineteenth century and the dawning of the twentieth were the halcyon days of Giuseppe Morello, who was known to cop......more

Goodreads review by Paul on February 18, 2011

There have been many stories written concerning "The Mafia". Most of these books pick up the story of the Mafia around the 1920's to the present day. Mike Dash has put together the story of the Mafia from its very beginnings around 1890 thru 1920's. The story begins with the formation of lawless grou......more

Goodreads review by Robert on August 25, 2017

Fairly interesting book about the history of the Mafia in the United States. At times it was hard to keep track of all the characters and how they were inter-related, and I still do not take to the writing style of the author (this is the second book in a row I've read by him). But some of the stori......more

Goodreads review by Bobby on August 27, 2009

This was a pretty slow read, but I really enjoyed this book and can see myself going back to is as a reference in the future. I found it peculiar towards the end of the book, when I found myself almost rooting for the original boss of bosses "Clutch Hand" Morello. I even felt sorry for some of the i......more