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THE
OUTFIT:
Publisher:
Bloomsbury USA Format: Hardcover and Trade Paperback Foreign
sales: UK Accolades
Endorsements "This is the most
in-depth, dispassionate study of organized crime and big business to
date. Russo located most of the skeletons in this masterful probe." "Russo's amazing book gets
to the heart of the Chicago Outfit. This is an authoritative and
engrossing work about the Windy City's colorful mob and the 'legit'
partners who helped make them the toughest and most successful crew in
the country."
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(US edition)
(UK edition) |
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"The Outfit is an
outstanding work of investigative reporting about a crucial juncture in
American parapolitics. The index alone is worth the price of admission.
Congratulations, then, to Gus Russo for digging so deep and writing so
well about a very mysterious place in time, and the murderous characters
who gave it so much glamor. Reviews "[The Outfit] goes beyond
the surface in exploring the growth of organized crime in Chicago...[Gus
Russo] has provided the in-depth coverage that reporters working during
the heyday of the mob would have liked to have done....he details the
relationships of gangsters with greedy businessmen, politicians and
police...Russo's book is a saga of more than 500 pages of good
journalism that is an informative, tireless read. It is for followers of
mob lore or the beginner who wants to jump with both feet into a subject
that has often been only superficially reported...his careful research
may provide the reader with some new ideas or insights about the
Outfit...He does not excuse the criminals but portrays the two
groups--underworld and upperworld--as sharing culpability." "For students of the gangster life, the chief satisfaction of Gus Russo's
enormous chronicle, "The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the
Shaping of Modern America," will be the lavish attention paid to the Chicago
mobsters who came after the heyday of Al Capone. Russo demonstrates that
Capone's successors, though less storied than that 1920s icon, were equally
colorful and eccentric and that their dealings in a post-Prohibition world "In this impressive work,
investigative journalist Russo (Live by the Sword: The Secret War
Against Castro and the Death of JFK) combines hundreds of his own
interviews and newly revealed government files with the latest exposes
(e.g., Sally Denton and Roger Morris's The Money and the Power, on Las
Vegas) to present an in-depth history of the Chicago mob from the 1920s
through the 1960s. Russo shows how, during that period, "The
Outfit," as it called itself, helped elect several presidents,
created Las Vegas, and bankrolled Hollywood. The book is studded with
revelations, such as the true story of "The Untouchables,"
Bing Crosby's debt to the mob, and Al Capone's surprise conviction for
tax evasion. The author has no sympathy for those in political power,
decrying corruption in the Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon
administrations. In an afterword he reveals his strong opinions on the
topic, stating that white-collar criminals ("the upperworld")
have been ignored at the expense of those in the "underworld"
because of prejudice against Italians and the poor in general. Whether
or not the reader agrees, Russo has written the most detailed book on
the subject to date. Recommended for general collections." "Investigative reporter
Russo (Live by the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of
JFK) offers an impressive in-depth history of Chicago's elusive crime
syndicate. Unlike their trigger-happy East Coast counterparts, Chicago's
gangsters stressed businesslike discretion following the chaotic Capone
era, and they had a wide-ranging impact on American culture,
entertainment and politics that has never been fully documented. Russo
has new sources, ranging from entertainer Steve Allen's "crime
files" to the widow of the book's most memorable figure, the
Outfit's financial manager, "Curly" Humphreys. Others, like
Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, will be known to Mob aficionados, but
even they will note Russo's novel thesis, that the lucrative scams
carried out during the group's 40-year heyday involved members of the
respected "upperworld." These ventures ranged from the well
known, such as the gambling operations that fueled Chicago's civic
corruption, to the surprising (Mob-linked dairies were the first to use
"sell by" dates). The Outfit started off-track betting and Top
40 charts and, in its declining years, the Outfit's "fixer,"
Sidney Korshak, vetted the cast of The Godfather. According to Russo,
their "respectable" partners who publicly abhorred the
gangster element included Joe Kennedy, MCA president Jules Stein, Bing
Crosby, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and innumerable public
servants. Russo humanizes the shadowy gangsters without denying their
violent proclivities. He also examines them in the context of
traditional immigrant ambitions. Russo's illuminating history ....is the
book to beat in examining this mid-century criminal empire." "Each of its 560 pages is
enormously detailed. But Russo is so engagingly in command of his
material that - for me, anyway - it all holds together as an almost
seamless web. In the events it describes, it is inclusive, insightful
and revealing....A huge quantity of documented sources are drawn upon -
transcripts of congressional hearings, grand jury records, trials,
depositions, as well as hundreds of wiretaps, both legal and illegal.
Russo interviewed large numbers of participants, including widows of
major mobsters. There are excellent footnotes and bibliographical
references. From the outset, Russo writes briskly, with a clean,
colloquial vocabulary, never flashy." "Gus Russo has penned the
definitive work on the history of organized crime in Chicago. Majestic
in its scope (511 pages of text) its an ambitious and groundbreaking
book that will forever change our understanding of the most successful,
powerful and wealthiest Mob family in American history. While seasoned
researchers, and probably only seasoned researchers, will recognize some
of the work included in the book (It isn't possible to pen the history
of the Chicago Mob without covering those well worn tales) they will be
equally impressed by the fresh material included in the work which sheds
an accurate and verifiable light on the Chicago Mobs so-called Golden
era. Researchers and writers will also be particularly impressed (and
thankful) for the works impressive 24 page index, which was obviously
prepared as part of the book and not, as so often the case, as an
afterthought by an editor who doesn't have a grasp on the genre. The
same holds true for ten pages of sources. While Russo obviously writes
with an eye towards the experts in the field, the book is an enjoyable,
well paced and well written yarn for anyone with even a passing interest
in the Underworld. Thankfully, he has not been afflicted by the recent
trend in crime writing to punish the reader by insisting on providing
endless, dry and pointless facts that do nothing to forward the story.
This history is long overdue. Its accuracy and hundreds of hours of
research, saves and elevates the incredible history of the Chicago Mob
from the loon works perpetrated by that master of fiction Judy Campbell
and other secondary oddballs who stood on the fringe of the Mob, have no
understanding of the broader picture and yet have managed to place
themselves squarely in the middle as experts. As a result of Russo's
research, the reader is given far more than the standard
one-dimensional-man depiction of the legendary leaders of the Chicago
Mob. Thankfully Russo centers much of that attention and the story, on
Murray Humpreys, the most complex, fascinating and intelligent Hood to
swagger through gangland. Virtually all of the material provided on
Humpreys is new, provided to the writer by the Outlaws second wife. The
work also includes insightful and fresh facts on super boss Tony Accardo
and without underlining it, accurately places street boss Sam Giancana
in his proper place as little more than a common, albeit ambitious,
thug. The Outfit is a must-have for the organized crime reader and an
essential to any researcher. "The prime
virtue of The Outfit in general is the excellence of its documentation
... It is as a guide to the Mob and its ways that Russo should be
judged, and ... he makes an absorbing guide."
Dramatic Rights: Contact Lukeman |
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