McMafia

By Misha Glenny

Misha Glenny's groundbreaking study of global organized crime is now the inspiration for an 8-part AMC crime drama starring James Norton (War and Peace), Juliet Rylance, and David Strathairn. 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by dreams of newly opened markets. But no one could have foreseen that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the worldwide rise of organized crime. Today, it is estimated that illegal trade accounts for one-fifth of the global GDP.

In this fearless and wholly authoritative investigation of the seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares, veteran reporter Misha Glenny travels across five continents to speak with participants from every level of the global underworld--police, victims, politicians, and even the criminals themselves. What follows is a groundbreaking, propulsive look at an unprecedented phenomenon from a savvy, street-wise guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 8, 2008
• ISBN: 9780307268624

Reviews for McMafia

[uskalim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book indeed!

[brendart20 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't put this book down. Absolutely riveting account of the development of the Eastern European mafia after the fall of Communism. V. interesting about the drug trade in the Americas too.

[theampersand · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fast-paced tour through the new global criminal underworld that's as informative as it is entertaining. Glenny has done both his research and his footwork, and much of the research that went in to this book seems to have been conducted first-hand. At it's best, this book reads like an adventurous travelogue of some of the world's most dangerous places. Those who enjoy reading about organized crime for its patina of dangerous, moneyed cool will find some interesting stuff here: Glenny provides some juicy details about the fast, dangerous lives of Russian mobsters and describes the surprisingly prosaic business dealings of Japan's semi-legal "yakuza" organizations, which bear only the faintest resemblance to the gangsters you've seen in Scorsese films. His real subject, though, is globalization, and he builds a convincing case that large-scale, transnational organized crime is the global economy's inevitable downside. The mob's real objective, he argues, is not violence or power but money, and they get it by providing goods and services that the world's governments have decided to outlaw or by filling the gaps left by corrupt, inefficient states. Glenny's prose doesn't always do his arguments justice; he sometimes opts for pulpy expressions of outrage when a simple description is all that's called for. At other times, he seems a bit too sunny about his subject. Though it's hard not to admire the creativity and initiative of some of the mobsters that he describes, his contention that some organized crime syndicates can become sources of social stability probably won't convince too many readers. Still, the criminal empires described in "McMafia" are so enormous, wealthy, and far-reaching that, by the book's end, one is almost ready to concede that corruption and organized crime are an inextricable features of human existence. If they are, this would make Glenny a worthwhile chronicler of our mobbed-up planet.

[kylenapoli · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Glenny is no prose stylist, but, as with his best work on the Balkans, this book is compulsively readable and plenty scary.