Mafia Life: Love, Death, and Money at the Heart of Organized Crime

Secret criminal societies are found all over the globe: the Italian and Russian Mafias, the Triads, the Yakuza. Though they evolved in different cultures, these criminal "families" have much in common. Author Varese (criminology, Univ. of Oxford; Mafias on the Move) uses his own extensive research and that of others to describe various aspects of life in an organized crime family. Organized along a time line from "birth" into the organization through a secret ritual to the (frequently violent) death of the initiate, his work includes the management of the organization, which is much like any large corporation, and the roles of women in these societies, which are slower to evolve than society at large. There is an entertaining chapter on the vanity of mobsters, who love seeing movie versions of themselves, and a fascinating chapter on how mobs interfere in political movements (for example, the Triads interfering in the prodemocracy movement in Hong Kong). The author's main focus is on the Sicilian and American mafias, with disappointingly little discussion of other groups.