A Portrait Of Organized Crime In Italy

Veteran organized crime reporter George Anastasia reviewed Petra Reski's book on organized crime in Italy, The Honored Society: A Portrait of Italy's Most Powerful Mafia for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Honored Society is part memoir, part polemic by the German-born journalist who has lived in Italy since 1989 and carved out a career writing about and trying to understand the Italian underworld.  

To her, the Mafia is any one of four Italian organized crime syndicates - Cosa Nostra in Sicly, 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, Camorra in Naples, and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia. Reski has built her book around profiles of mobsters, informants, crusaders, and coconspirators whose lives and stories offer insights into the how and why of the Mafia.  rest o f the

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/literature/20130324_A_look_at_the_how_and_why_behind_the_Mafia.html

George De Stefano at the New York Journal of Books also reviewed the book.

Petra Reski’s The Honored Society purports to be, and is being marketed as, an exposé of the ’Ndrangheta, the criminal organization based in the southern Italian region of Calabria that has expanded its operations throughout Europe.

But it’s really a Mafia romance. 
 
A German journalist who has covered the organized crime beat for newspapers and in books, Ms. Reski details the economic and political power, and the horrific violence, of the ’Ndrangheta, and of Sicily’s La Cosa Nostra and Naples’ camorra gangs.

But her up close and personal accounts of some of Italy’s most notorious gangsters often betray not only a morbid fascination with these violent men and their crimes but also admiration for, and even infatuation with them. They—mafiosi, camorristi, ’ndranghetisti—do terrible things, but they’re bold, clever and enterprising, as well as rich and powerful.

You can read the rest of his review via the below link:

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/honored-society-portrait-italy%E2%80%99s-most-powerful-mafia