Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America - Hardcover

Fox, Stephen R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068804350X ISBN 13: 9780688043506

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1989

Synopsis

Drawing on such primary sources as manuscript collections, interviews, and congressional hearings, the author builds a history of American organized crime from the 1920s to the 1980s

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

A triangular collusion among politicians, law enforcers and crooks enables organized crime in the U.S. to flourish, asserts Fox ( The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising ). In a well-researched, engrossing, often-startling chronicle based on interviews, unpublished manuscript collections and Congressional records, the author alleges underworld involvement by numerous well-known figures, past and present, among them entertainers (Milton Berle), journalists (Walter Winchell), boxers (Floyd Patterson) and several U.S. presidents (FDR, Truman, JFK). He explores the ethnic and class dimension of organized crime, from Irish, Jewish and Italian bootleggers of the Prohibition era to the latest influx of newer immigrant groups, especially Latin and Asian gangsters. Deploring the cult of "Mafia chic" and the romanticization of criminals, Fox, in this quietly sensational account, leaves no doubt that the mob is still a national cancer. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

"WASP anxiety" regarding immigrant criminals resulted in Prohibition--13 years which successfully transformed local gangs into the national criminal networks of today. With this as his thesis and starting point, historian Fox then reels off a series of vignettes that depict the struggle between WASP crime-fighter and ethnic criminal. Using an eclectic mix of sources ranging from original newspaper accounts to congressional hearings, the author has produced an almost encyclopedic popular history of organized crime in 20th-century America. Of special interest are chapters devoted to the Kennedy assassinations and aftermath and to the Mafia-as-myth school of sociology. This is an entertaining, thoughtful book covering old ground and much that is new. Recommended.
- Jerry Maioli, Seattle
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 068804350X
• ISBN 13: 9780688043506
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512