Summary of Borgata by Louis Ferrante: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia

By Justin Reese

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of Borgata by Louis Ferrante: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia

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Borgata: Rise of Empire is a book by former mobster Louis Ferrante, detailing the rise of the Mafia from Sicily to America. Ferrante traces the social, economic, and political forces that fueled the mafia's rise, focusing on early American mobsters like Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky. The book is the first in a three-volume epic history, providing a comprehensive account of the world's most famous criminal network.

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224991341

Book preview

PREFACE

William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was criticized for starting his work only a few years after the fall of Nazi Germany. However, Shirer argued that most documentary material became available at the time of the Reich's fall, and the lack of records created a gap for mafia historians who attempted to fill in the blanks with imaginative writing. This has led to a lack of clarity and humility in the interpretation of history.

Historians start with facts and events and must bridge gaps, which can vary in size. R.G. Collingwood believed that history is best interpreted by people who understand the experiences of the figures responsible for pivotal events. Publishers often commission writers who have never lived in the mafia's world, spoken their tongue, committed their crimes, drawn their blood, fled justice with them, and served prison time alongside them.

This trilogy is the first mafia history written by someone who has lived The Life and knows intuitively which stories make sense and which do not. While engaged in research, the author encountered stories that were obviously untrue but had been repeated for decades by mafia historians and documentary television commentators. The problem often lies in one author accepting information from another without critical examination, leading to a series of books reinforcing falsehoods.

Although mafia prosecutions have increased over the last few decades, researchers have come to rely on indictments, trial transcripts, and newspaper articles to form a cohesive history. However, these sources are highly inadequate and often misleading. Criminal defendants, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and informants depreciate the truth, making the courtroom a chamber of inaccuracies that cannot be relied upon without some degree of skepticism.

The mafia case is often defended by a mafia turncoat, who attributes all of their evil deeds to their boss, claiming they were following orders. This defense is often used in court to avoid appearing more savage to a jury than the defendant they wish to convict. In Borgata: Rise of Empire, the author relies heavily on personal experiences and personal connections with the men involved. They speak in code, using an evasive mafia jargon sprinkled with hand gestures, facial expressions, hints, incomplete thoughts, half-sentences, and suggestions.

The author refers to the United States as America, using terms like mafia, mobster, gangster, racketeer, and others interchangeably. The book uses the approach of a screenwriter, introducing only the characters and scenes that move the plot forward, dispensing with peripheral events that contribute little or nothing to the mafia's historical progress or overall decline.

The author traces the mafia's earliest origins in Sicily and uses a conversational tone to make the reader feel as though they are casually chatting about the mafia. They trace the mafia's origins and the roles of great men, such as Plutarch, who highlighted the vices and virtues of great men. The author emphasizes the importance of understanding the laws of La Cosa Nostra and the perspectives of mobsters, as they offer a better character study than those of the ancient historian Plutarch.

Introduction

‘Where’d Daddy Go?’

In 1979, Jordanian immigrant Khaled Fahd Darwish Daoud discovered the demand for American cars in Kuwait, leading him to purchase used cars from automobile auctions in New York and New Jersey. He discovered that many of the cars were stolen, leading him to inform the New York Police Department. Detective Peter Calabro of the NYPD's Auto Crime Unit informed Roy DeMeo of the auto crime ring, who had killed over a hundred men in his career as a hitman. DeMeo then devised a plan to sell two Chevy Caprices at an auto collision shop in Brooklyn to Daoud and his partner Ronald Falcaro.

Daoud's colleague, Ronald Falcaro, was not involved in the crime or the mafia, but he was a wholesale car dealer who was not involved in the crime. DeMeo, a seasoned mobster, knew the mob's rules, which required the murder of an innocent person to be avoided at all costs. Daoud was guilty, but Falcaro was innocent. DeMeo decided to postpone the phony car sale and call off the hit until Daoud could be ambushed alone. Instead, DeMeo shot and made Falcaro disappear.

Donna Falcaro and her husband, Ronald, are driving to an auto body shop to buy cars for their youngest child's birthday party. Roy DeMeo and his crew are sharpening butcher knives and screwing silencers onto handguns, not hesitant to kill an innocent man. Falcaro asks the man at the door about their electricity cut off, which may have given him the slightest sense of something wrong. However, a bullet tore through his brain, and he is killed.

Falcaro's exit is sealed off, and his crumpled body is dragged onto the pool liner. DeMeo, an expert at dismembering bodies, prepares lunch for his crew, which includes hot dogs and pizza. DeMeo cuts up Falcaro's body and eats pizza with blood-covered hands.

The story revolves around the history of nations, peoples, ideas, and cultures, beginning on one of the most beautiful islands on Earth. Donna Falcaro hides her worries while watching over a houseful of real children, some of whom would grow up without a father. They would never know what happened to their dad. The macabre scene begins with Roy DeMeo and leaves the macabre scene behind.

PART ONE

Sicilia

The Conquered Conquerors

Sicily, a Mediterranean island, has been conquered by both European and African conquerors throughout the centuries. Although rape did occur, it did not occur on a grand scale, unlike during the barbarian invasions of Rome or the Soviet race for Berlin. The island's long list of occupiers took the island by force, and some came to relieve an old empire that had grown weak and tired. Sicilian men were especially protective of their women, as seen in the 1282 massacre of the French when a jealous husband killed 2,000 Frenchmen. This bloodletting was repeated for centuries as a warning to occupiers that it may be okay to take the Sicilians' agriculture but never their women.

Family ties in Sicily were often thicker than in other areas of Europe, as wives were often blood relatives. For centuries, local marriage pools in some isolated towns and villages were more like puddles, with everyone knowing each other and connected by blood. A large family was also a source of power and protection, offering a patriarch absolute control over a village. Clans that were not connected were often at odds, resulting in long blood feuds, which constituted a strategic reason to intermarry for survival.

When mafia families were formed, these marital practices continued, and each mafia family became an extension of a blood family that picked up where genes left off. This intermixture of Greek, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Hun, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Spanish, and other occupiers has made Sicilians a potent DNA cocktail.

Sicilian culture has a long history of cultural adaptation, akin to the absorption of cultures by diaspora Jews. This is due to Darwinian law, which binds stronger cultures to weaker ones. The English, for example, have a history of successful invasions of Sicily, such as the Norman invasion in 1066. However, the contemporary populace is not a timid, spineless people but rather fearless, aggressive, and purpose-driven. They are not afraid of being besieged, but rather are as much the conquerors as the besieged.

The Sicilians of yesteryear and today share similarities, such as George Orwell's comparison between England of 1940 and 1840. The mafia, a powerful subculture, traces its roots back to Sicilian culture, which has remained largely unchanged throughout history. The mafia's strength and focus on family have shaped the Sicilian people's identity and culture.

Historians have argued that the successive foreign occupations of Sicily created political instability, forcing the Sicilian people to govern themselves through unwritten laws. However, evidence contradicts this theory. Sicilians had ample opportunity to work with the government or rebel against it, but did very little of either. The answer to this can be found within the family unit, which was considered the most ancient of all societies. As long as the Sicilian family felt free and independent, it mattered little whose royal finger was resting on the map of Sicily.

National sovereignty and individual liberty are very different; plenty of sovereign states enslave their people. Sicilians seldom rebelled in search of national freedom as long as they possessed individual freedom, which is the freedom to live as one pleases without interference from one's government. When Sicilians did rebel, it was often in search of food, coinciding with a drought or a bad crop.

For over two millennia, government after government did not care much about governing Sicily, as the target of each occupier was the island's rich resources, never the Sicilian people. As long as goods made it to port on time, rulers exhibited at best an effort at effecting good