C. Alexander Hortis

This was a really hard book to give a rating to; from the content point of view this book would have been awarded a full 4 thumbs as it was obviously well researched, and very interesting reading. It takes everything the reader thinks they know about the Mafia and puts it into context. It dispels a lot of the myth and romanticism that surrounds this group of people and shows them for what they really were. The Book itself seemed to be aimed at those who already have knowledge of the Underworld workings of the mafia, but this doesn’t take away from it being a very informative read for those who are dipping into Mafia history for the first time.

Although this book is written very much like a history text; it includes sociology, economics and geography with some very detailed tables, I couldn’t help but feel that this was just someone’s lecture notes that they had bound into a book. There was an over use of the phrases ‘as you will see’ or ‘now let us look at’ that just made it feel as if this particular take on the subject of the Mafia was meant to be heard not read. Throw in the overlong chapter subheadings which appear on every page, and you have a writing style that I could only rating as 2 thumbs, and that was being kind.

My initial reasoning behind picking this up was an interest in Early New York, particularly the Italian side of things, as I have Family members who lived in this era and area. This book did shed a great deal of light on life in the time period covered by the book, but not enough to give the boost to the rating it so sorely needs. In the end I decided to split the difference between the two above rating points and give it a three.

The book was informative, but extremely dull in places which was a shame given the amount of research that had gone into it. Maybe with a stricter editor, who was willing to cut out a lot of the ‘lecture’ speak, this could have been a lot less tedious and grating. I would recommend it to anyone that is interesting in this subject, but be warned it may not be what you are expecting.

Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/11/07/the-mob-and-the-city-the-hidden-history-of...





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
… (plus d'informations)

This was a really hard book to give a rating to; from the content point of view this book would have been awarded a full 4 thumbs as it was obviously well researched, and very interesting reading. It takes everything the reader thinks they know about the Mafia and puts it into context. It dispels a lot of the myth and romanticism that surrounds this group of people and shows them for what they really were. The Book itself seemed to be aimed at those who already have knowledge of the Underworld workings of the mafia, but this doesn’t take away from it being a very informative read for those who are dipping into Mafia history for the first time.

Although this book is written very much like a history text; it includes sociology, economics and geography with some very detailed tables, I couldn’t help but feel that this was just someone’s lecture notes that they had bound into a book. There was an over use of the phrases ‘as you will see’ or ‘now let us look at’ that just made it feel as if this particular take on the subject of the Mafia was meant to be heard not read. Throw in the overlong chapter subheadings which appear on every page, and you have a writing style that I could only rating as 2 thumbs, and that was being kind.

My initial reasoning behind picking this up was an interest in Early New York, particularly the Italian side of things, as I have Family members who lived in this era and area. This book did shed a great deal of light on life in the time period covered by the book, but not enough to give the boost to the rating it so sorely needs. In the end I decided to split the difference between the two above rating points and give it a three.

The book was informative, but extremely dull in places which was a shame given the amount of research that had gone into it. Maybe with a stricter editor, who was willing to cut out a lot of the ‘lecture’ speak, this could have been a lot less tedious and grating. I would recommend it to anyone that is interesting in this subject, but be warned it may not be what you are expecting.

Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/11/07/the-mob-and-the-city-the-hidden-history-of...





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
… (plus d'informations)