Book Review: Five Families

Selwyn Raab; read by Paul Constanzo, Five Families: the rise, decline, and resurgence of America's most powerful Mafia empires. Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media, 2015.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: True crime, mobsters, Mafia, NYC
Format: Audiobook
Source: Via Hoopla from the Madison County (KY) Public Library

It took me a while but I got done reading this. Raab's book attempts to provide a comprehensive history of the five mob families of New York City: Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. I picked up this book mainly because Raab was interviewed in a couple of mob documentaries I watched. The book really packs a lot, maybe too much.

Let me go over some highlights. Raab starts right away the first chapter being fairly stern and direct about the role of the Mafia in NYC and how they dominated businesses and the impact they had. Much of the NYC officials pretty much tolerated the Mafia as long as the industries they controlled delivered their services. Author describes in first chapter how he compiled the information in pieces from various sources and from research. Chapter 2 goes over the ceremony for a made man, taking place in modern times. This chapter is dragging quite a bit, using an individual to illustrate. Chapter 3 goes over this young man's life and his start. The book is still quite slow. I keep waiting for the author to get to the history parts. Chapter 4 finally gets us to the history, going back to the roots in Sicily. Interesting that many Sicilian immigrants came to the US via New Orleans, and eventually some of  them established their own Mafia there. This Chapter also highlights Italian American detective Petrosino, who is the subject of the book The Black Hand (link to my review).

The main issue with the book is that it tries to cover everything. The result is that some stories are covered better than others. In addition, since much of this takes place in New York City, stories can and do overlap, so you can get a bit of repetition. Additionally, the text can be a bit dense. Even if you are listening to a reader, it is still pretty dense text. The topic overall is interesting, but the book itself not as much. To be honest, you may be better off finding smaller, better focused books on specific topics; you might retain what you learn better than trying to slog through this door stopper.

Overall, not bad but it just tries to do it all, and the result is just too long and dense. I'd consider this as optional for libraries. Hard fans of Mafia stories may want to read it, but casual readers may want to find shorter single topic books. In the end, it was OK.

2 out of 5 stars.

Book qualifies for the following 2020 Reading Challenges: