The First Family: Giuseppe Morello and the Birth of the American Mafia. Foreword by Dmitry Goblin Puchkov

Long before the "Five Families" took control of the criminal world in New York, it was ruled without competition by the "boss of bosses" Giuseppe Morello. Mike Dash resurrects the little-known story of the birth of the American Mafia at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. This is a tale spanning three decades, covering the distance from the villages of Sicily to the streets of Little Italy. Utilizing a colossal amount of previously unpublished sources - archives of secret services, prison records, and interviews with surviving members of Mafia Families, Dash created a unique work that details how Italian ethnic crime originated in the U.S., nearly bringing the entire American justice system to its knees.