The first book to document organized labor and the massive federal clean-up effort.

"[T]he Teamsters, the largest A.F.L. affiliate... has been understudied... Russell's motives in seeking to redress this imbalance are certainly commendable." ?Maurice Isserman, The New York Times Book Review"[A] well-researched study of the longtime Teamsters leader...[that] could put Hoffa back on the historical map for a new generation of students of labor history." ?Publishers Weekly "An unexpectedly enthralling account of Jimmy Hoffa's tactics and aspirations... Russell's history of the Teamsters under Hoffa illustrates the vibrancy of the labor movement?for better or worse?during the middle 50 years of the 20th century." ?Kirkus Reviews "In this gripping biography of Jimmy Hoffa... Thaddeus Russell launches a vigorous attack on the reigning orthodoxy in labor history." ?David L. Chappell, Newsday "Russell bravely challenges the received wisdom of the left, the right, and the morally earnest center. If you want to get serious about the real meaning of class in the last century, read this gracefully yet powerfully argued book." ?Nelson Lichtenstein "Out of the Jungle delivers a much-needed and more nuanced understanding of a tumultuous period in the history of...the nation." ?John Gallagher, Detroit News/Free Press "...strongly recommended reading." ?The Midwest Book Review's Bookwatch

"The Racketeer's Progress explores the contested and contingent origins of the modern American economy by examining the violent resistance to its development. Historians often portray Chicago as an unregulated industrial metropolis, composed of factories and immigrant labourers. In fact, the city was home to thousands of craftsmen - carpenters, teamsters, barbers, butchers, etc. - who formed unions and associations that governed commerce through pickets, assaults, and bombings. Working together, these groups forcefully challenged the power of national corporations and physically managed the development of mass culture in the city."--BOOK JACKET.

Gallo made millions for New York's Colombo Mafia family before becoming an undercover FBI informant. In "Breakshot," he captures the American underworld in all its tawdry spectacle.

The chilling true story of how the son of the most violent mobster in Chicago helped bring down the last great American crime syndicate: the one-hundred-year-old Chicago Outfit. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank Calabrese, Jr. reveals for the first time the outfit’s “made” ceremony and describes being put to work alongside his father and uncle in loan sharking, gambling, labor racketeering, and extortion. As members of the outfit, they plotted the slaying of a fellow gangster, committed the bombing murder of a trucking executive, the gangland execution of two mobsters—whose burial in an Indiana cornfield was reenacted in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster film Casino—and numerous other hits. The Calabrese Crew’s colossal earnings and extreme ruthlessness made them both a dreaded criminal gang and the object of an intense FBi inquiry. When Frank Jr., his father, and Uncle Nick are convicted on racketeering violations, “Junior” and “Senior” are sent to the same federal penitentiary in Michigan. It's there that Frank Jr. makes the life-changing decision to go straight. But he needs to keep his father behind bars in order to regain control of his life and save his family. So Frank Jr. makes a secret deal with prosecutors, and for six months—unmonitored and unprotected—he wears a wire as his father recounts decades of hideous crimes. Frank Jr.’s cooperation with the FBI for virtually no monetary gain or special privileges helped create the government’s “Operation Family Secrets” campaign against the Chicago outfit, which reopened eighteen unsolved murders, implicated twelve La Cosa Nostra soldiers and two outfit bosses, and became one of the largest organized crime cases in U.S. history. Operation Family Secrets intimately portrays how organized crime rots a family from the inside out while detailing Frank Jr.’s deadly prison-yard mission, the FBI’s landmark investigation, and the U.S. attorney’s office’s daring prosecution of America’s most dangerous criminal organization.

Publisher Fact Sheet This engrossing book probes the motives & actions of all the players in the Conference of Studio Unions Strike in 1946, tracing the far-reaching consequences of this strike & the ensuing lockout to the subsequent fury of Red-baiting & the encroachment of organized crime in Hollywood.

The true story of how a small-town lawman in upstate New York busted a Cosa Nostra conference in 1957, exposing the Mafia to America. In a small village in upstate New York, mob bosses from all over the country—Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joe Bonanno, Joe Profaci, Cuba boss Santo Trafficante, and future Gambino boss Paul Castellano—were nabbed by Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell as they gathered to sort out a bloody war of succession. For years, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had adamantly denied the existence of the Mafia, but young Robert Kennedy immediately recognized the shattering importance of the Apalachin summit. As attorney general when his brother JFK became president, Bobby embarked on a campaign to break the spine of the mob, engaging in a furious turf battle with the powerful Hoover. Detailing mob killings, the early days of the heroin trade, and the crusade to loosen the hold of organized crime, this momentous story will captivate fans of Gus Russo and Luc Sante. Reavill scintillatingly recounts the beginning of the end for the Mafia in America and how it began with a good man in the right place at the right time. “The best, and best-written, true-crime story I’ve ever read. It’s as suspenseful, detailed, racy, and knowing as a novel by Hammett or Chandler.” —Howard Frank Mosher, award-winning author of North Country “A close investigation into the crime bosses’ upstate New York summit and its grisly aftermath, Reavill’s book accurately recreates one of the golden eras of American organized crime.” —Publishers Weekly

Winner of the 2007 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for advancing human rights

Why do Americans alternately celebrate and condemn gangsters, outlaws and corrupt politicians? Why do they immortalize Al Capone while forgetting his more successful contemporaries George Remus or Roy Olmstead? Why are some public figures repudiated for their connections to the mob while others gain celebrity status? Drawing on historical accounts, the author analyzes the public's understanding of organized crime and questions some of our most deeply held assumptions about crime and its role in society.

A Chicago mob attorney describes his double life as an FBI informant; his role in bringing down the Chicago Outfit, perhaps the most powerful family in the history of organized crime; and his new life in the Witness Protection Program. By the author of Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John DeLorean. Reprint.