SECRET SOCIETIES BOOK AN AMERICAN MAFIA

ORIGINS STORY BUY BOOK

Much is popularised of the Mafia in film, literature, music and urban legend. Some stories are inspired by and respectful of the facts, but many are presented through a creative lens distorting how organized crime began. References are often made to criminal activity in the infamous Prohibition Era, but few stories cover the preceding years, until now. This new book presents a graphic history of true crime. It examines the origins story of the American Mafia through the rise and fall of the first boss of bosses Giuseppe Morello and his powerful brother-in-law Ignazio Lupo.

This is a time before the Castellammarese War – a peri­od of bloody pow­er strug­gles for con­trol of the Italian-American Mafia. The impor­tant peri­od pre­ced­ing the war is con­sid­ered murky and lack­ing his­toric doc­u­men­ta­tion. This metic­u­lous­ly illus­trat­ed vol­ume of Secret Societies shines a light on this fas­ci­nat­ing time of American his­to­ry and orga­nized crime.

It does so through research from pri­ma­ry sources, rich­ly illu­mi­nat­ing the peri­od of the 1890s–1920s using pho­tos, doc­u­ments, con­tem­po­rary arti­cles and illus­tra­tions. Starting with a look at the “Black Hand” phe­nom­e­non and its rela­tion­ship to orga­nized crime.

Black Hand let­ters became syn­ony­mous with crime in Italian com­mu­ni­ties across the US. Recipients were threat­ened with bombs, arson, or mur­der unless a demand was sat­is­fied. At the height of the crime wave New York City record­ed 110 Black Hand bomb­ings in just eight months.

The book also exam­ines the sto­ry of the “Barrel Murder” in which Giuseppe Morello, the first boss-of-boss- es of the US Mafia, was arrest­ed fol­low­ing a bru­tal mur­der in the heart of New York’s “Little Italy.” Soon fol­lowed by the trag­ic sto­ry of NYPD offi­cer Joseph Petrosino who became a pio­neer in the fight against black han­ders and Mafiosi alike. In 1909, while a secret mis­sion, Petrosino became the only NYPD offi­cer to be killed while on for­eign soil after he was assas­si­nat­ed in Palermo.

Through a com­bi­na­tion of peri­od pho­tographs, gov­ern­ment records, news clip­pings, graph­ic design and ful­ly anno­tat­ed text, Secret Societies per­mits the read­er to wit­ness the impor­tant moments and trends in the devel­op­ment of Sicilian-American orga­nized crime in the United States.

SECRET SOCIETIES — AN AMERICAN MAFIA ORIGINS STORY VISIT STORE