Introduction -- Black hand, Calabrians, and the Mafia -- "First family" of the New York Mafia -- The Mafia and the Baff murder -- The neapolitan challenge -- New York City in the 1920s -- Castellammare war and "La Cosa Nostra" -- Americanization and the families -- Localism, tradition, and innovation.

This text includes complete discussion of theories of organized crime, major forms of organized crime, and deterrence. It goes beyond other texts in providing a thorough discussion of the history of organized crime as well as emerging new crime organizations.

Popular histories of organized crime in the United States often look to the Mafia and the sons of early twentieth-century immigrants – such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky – for their origins. In this second edition of Organized Crime and American Power, Michael Woodiwiss refocuses on US organized crime as an American problem. The book starts in 1789, with the birth of a new nation, intended to be run according to laws and conventions, with a written commitment to civil rights. Woodiwiss examines the organization of crime before the Civil War, which damaged or destroyed the lives of those excluded from constitutional protections: Indigenous peoples, Black people, and women. The book focuses on white supremacist crime and the pernicious influence of Southern leaders in alliance with opportunistic politicians. It examines the organized crimes of powerful business interests in alliance with politicians, as well as the corrupt consequences of the US moralistic campaigns against alcohol, gambling, drugs, and abortion. Organized Crime and American Power brings solid historical evidence and analysis to the task of refuting conventional wisdom that frames organized crime as something external to US political, economic, and social systems.

Organized crime in America today is not the tough hoodlums familiar to moviegoers and TV watchers. It is more sophisticated, with many college graduates, gifted with organizational genius, all belonging to twenty-four tightly knit "families," who have corrupted legitimate business and infiltrated some of the highest levels of local, state, and federal government. Their power reaches into Congress, into the executive and judicial branches, police agencies, and labor unions, and into such business enterprises as real estate, retail stores, restaurants, hotels, linen-supply houses, and garbage-collection routes.How does organized crime operate? How dangerous is it? What are the implications for American society? How may we cope with it? In answering these questions, Cressey asserts that because organized crime provides illicit goods and services demanded by legitimate society, it has become part of legitimate society. This fascinating account reveals the parallels: the growth of specialization, "big-business practices" (pooling of capital and reinvestment of profits; fringe benefits like bail money), and government practices (negotiated settlements and peace treaties, defined territories, fair-trade agreements).For too long we have, as a society, concerned ourselves only with superficial questions about organized crime. "Theft of the Nation" focuses on to a more profound and searching level. Of course, organized crime exists. Cressey not only establishes this fact, but proceeds to explore it rigorously and with penetration. One need not agree with everything Cressey writes to conclude that no one, after the publication of "Theft of the Nation", can be knowledgeable about organized crime without having read this book.

An examination of Russian organized crime at home and in the U.S.