The Godfather Effect

Santopietro (Sinatra in Hollywood; The Importance of Being Barbra) presents a mélange of personal family memoir, Mafia/Sicilian history, study of the assimilation of Italians in America, and analysis of The Godfather, both the best-selling novel by Mario Puzo and the iconic film trilogy. Raised in a religiously mixed upper-middle-class family in Connecticut, the author was largely uninterested in his family's Italian heritage until the success of Francis Coppola's cinema epic and its two sequels. Although Santopietro possibly elevates The Godfather phenomenon to too exalted a place in the fabric of American culture, he makes thought-provoking observations. Among them is the comparison of the Corleone clan's criminal activities to the excesses of capitalism and Nixon-era governance. Frank Sinatra, whom Santopietro admires as an example of a premier Italian American success story, rates a chapter of his own.