Sign-In
Cart
The Genovese: How Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, and Frank Costello Built New York's Most Powerful Crime Family
Paperback
Series: Dynasties That Ruled the World, Book 7
Biographies General20th Century United States HistoryTrue Crime
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 7 2026
Pages: 78
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.16 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.00
Language: English
On the tenth of September, 1931, four hitmen walked into an office near Grand Central Station and shot Salvatore Maranzano, the self proclaimed boss of bosses of New York's underworld. The man who ordered that killing chose not to claim the throne for himself. Instead, he built something far more lasting.
The Genovese tells the story of how three immigrant boys, Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, and Frank Costello, rose from the poverty of Sicilian and Italian tenements to construct the most powerful criminal organization America has ever produced. It begins in the crowded streets of early twentieth century New York, follows the bootlegging fortunes that Prohibition made possible, and traces the creation of the Commission, a structure of shared criminal governance that would outlast every one of its founders and shape organized crime in America for the better part of a century.
This is not simply a story of violence, though violence runs through every chapter. It is the story of a rivalry between two ambitious men, Genovese and Costello, that ended in a bullet grazing a skull outside a Manhattan apartment building. It is the story of Joseph Valachi, a frightened prisoner whose testimony before Congress shattered decades of secrecy and changed how the American public understood the Mafia forever. It is the story of Vincent Gigante, a boss who spent nearly thirty years wandering his own neighborhood in a bathrobe, convincing judges and psychiatrists that he was too unstable to prosecute, while secretly running one of the most sophisticated criminal enterprises in the country. And it is the story of an organization that, even after a century of federal prosecution, informants, and decline, resurfaced in 2025 at the center of a national sports betting scandal that reached into the NBA itself.
Readers who pick up this book will come away with a genuine understanding of how organized crime actually took root and evolved in America, not through myth or Hollywood shorthand, but through the documented rise, reign, and decline of the family that came to define it. You will meet the men who built an empire on cooperation rather than conquest, watch that empire nearly tear itself apart from within, and follow it as it adapted, again and again, to survive threats its founders never could have imagined. Along the way, this book offers real insight into the historical forces, Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the RICO Act, that shaped not just one crime family but the broader landscape of twentieth century America.
Written for readers with little or no prior knowledge of the subject, The Genovese unfolds as a single continuous narrative rather than a collection of disconnected facts, introducing every figure, every place, and every historical development in the order needed to understand it. If you have ever wondered how the Mafia in America actually came to be, who built it, and why one family in particular came to define it for a hundred years, this book offers that story from beginning to end.
Also from
Cobs, Ally
Alexander The Great: The Macedonian King Who Conquered Persia and Reshaped the Ancient World
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
The Peloponnesian War: How Athens and Sparta Destroyed the Alliance That Saved Greece
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
Wentworth Woodhouse: Britain's Largest Private House and the Coal Fortune That Built and Broke It
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
Themistocles: The Athenian Statesman Who Defied the Persian Empire and Paid for It with Exile
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
The Persian Wars: The Rebellion, the Battles, and the Fight for Greek Independence
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
Philip II of Macedon: From Hostage Prince to the Most Powerful King in the Greek World
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
A History of Makeup: How Lead, Mercury, and Arsenic Shaped 6,000 Years of Beauty Standards
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
King Xerxes I of Persia: From the Throne of Susa to the Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
The Roman Empire: The Rise, Rule, and Fall of the Ancient World's Greatest Power
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
Lemuria: The Strange History of a Sunken Continent, from Victorian Science to New Age Belief
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
The Sasanian Empire: How Persia's Forgotten Power Rivaled Rome and Shaped the Ancient World
Cobs, Ally
Paperback
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover