THE LAST TESTAMENT OF LUCKY LUCIANO.

Gosch, Martin A. & Hammer, Richard

Verlag: Boston & Toronto. 1975. Little, Brown & Co., Inc.

Beschreibung

red hardbound 8vo. 8º (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in vg+ cond., minor rubbing, wrinkling, not price clipped (no price listed). nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no inking , underlining, remainder markings. book club edition. vii+461p. b&w photo illustrations. index. "Lanksy's gonna wind up the boss of everything." organized crime. espionage. FDR. World War II. joe adonis. albert anastasia. conspiracy theory. new world order. sicily. mafia. cosa nostra. batista. cuba. louis lepke. al capone. frank costello. don vitone genovese . mussonlini. dutch schultz. bugsy (oh, sorry) benjamin siegel. tammany hall. sing sing. exile. oss.~ Dictated by Charles "Lucky" Luciano himself during the final months of his life to film producer Martin A. Gosch, this powerful inside chronicle is literally the "last testament" of America's most notorious gangster. Against a violent, fast~moving panorama of America's underworld from the twenties to the fifties, Luciano relives his spectacular rise and fall, giving the reader for the first time his own version of his wealth, women, and wars with the law and his fellow mobsters. Born Salvatore Lucania in a poverty~stricken village in Sicily, Luciano emigrated to the United States in 1906. He picked up his English and his outlook on life as he roamed New York's Lower East Side and watched small~time neighborhood crooks flaunt their clothes, cars, and "protection" from the courts. "Rich was what counted," Luciano decided, "because the rich got away with anything." By the time he was twenty, he had recruited the partners who were to dominate the rackets in the United States for the next thirty years: Frank Costello and~a daring break with Sicilian tradition ~ two Jews, Meyer Lansky and Benny Siegel. Together they evolved the methods ~strong~!arm persuasion, disciplined gang action, and above all, carefully planned organization and expansion patterned after the operations of a legitimate big business ~ that with the coming of Prohibition transformed the underworld from a small tangle of "family" businesses into a smooth~running, fabulously profitable illegal empire. At the head of that empire stood the "Boss of Bosses," Lucky Luciano, whose ruthlessness and uncanny ability to analyze "business" situations killed off the rule of the Godfathers and made the Mafia into a modern corporation. In The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, he describes in full detail how he, Lansky, and Costello set up their empires, infiltrated legal and illegal business activities at every level, and, as the years passed, gradually and murderously began to encroach upon each other's territory. The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano is packed with revelations: how the mob sabotaged the Normandie during World War II as part of a scheme to get Luciano out of prison; who ordered Luciano to be "taken for a ride" and how he managed to survive it, thereby earning his famous nickname; what was behind Luciano's claim that Thomas Dewey "framed" him in his 1936 trial; who ran the Mafia's narcotics business and why Luciano disdained dealing in "junk"; how Luciano, Lansky and Costello made a deal helping to secure the Democratic presldentlal nomination for FDR ~ and how FDR double~crossed them after election day; and the true story behind the attempted assassinations of Frank Costello and Luciano and the murders of Bugsy Siegel and Albert Anastasia. Deported to Italy in 1946, exiled permanently from the United States, Luciano bitterly faced his increasing exclusion from the rackets he had built. Out of anger~ and need~ he authorized the film rights to his "life story," approved the final script, and then was forced to cancel the project after a final warning from the mob. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 2032404

Bibliografische Details

Titel: THE LAST TESTAMENT OF LUCKY LUCIANO.

Verlag: Boston & Toronto. 1975. Little, Brown & Co., Inc.

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Schutzumschlag