The Underboss
- Book Review,
by Peter Maas
Amazon.com
What makes this account of the Mafia life and times of Sammy Gravano so seductive is Peter Maas's skillful editing of interview material. From his opening line--"Yeah, you could say I came from a pretty tough neighborhood"--to his final poignant comment on having gotten all his tattoos removed except a head of Christ that resists being eliminated--"I guess God still wants me"--Gravano is nothing if not a compelling storyteller. He talks about his years in a youth gang, his robberies and shylocking, his murders, his lack of remorse (about which he is "not happy"), the ceremony of becoming a "made guy," his mentors, his "crew," his preference for gangsters over racketeers, his fascination with the Godfather films, his many business ventures, and his final years of disillusionment as the Cosa Nostra code he had passionately admired was breaking down, so that he chose to testify against his last boss, John Gotti.
From Library Journal
Maas (The Valachi Papers, LJ 6/1/69) and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano team up to write a somewhat informative book on the Cosa Nostra of New York from the 1970s through the early 1990s. Maas narrates Gravano's life story while quoting directly from his subject. One early quote sets the book's premise when Sammy says, "I wouldn't have minded going to Vietnam. You got medals for killing people there." Through the many descriptions of Sammy's involvement in the Mafia as a hitman and leading up to his appointment as underboss to John Gotti of the Gambino crime family, the reader gets a real sense of a street thug. We learn that Gotti and Gravano masterminded and carried out the murder of Paul Castellano, then boss of the crime family, outside of Sparks Steak House in New York City. Eventually, after both were indicted on murder and racketeering charges, Sammy opted to "rat" on Gotti and served only five years. As a depiction of life in the Cosa Nostra from a man who brought down perhaps the most famous mob figure since Al Capone, this book is recommended for libraries looking to expand their organized crime collections. [This book, which was embargoed until publication, has provoked a lawsuit by relatives of Gravano's victims under the Son of Sam law, though HarperCollins has denied that Gravano was paid for his contributions.?Ed.]?Brent Newmoyer, "Library Journal.-?Brent Newmoyer, "Library Journal"Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
New York Times Book Review
"Brilliantly constructed and grimly fascinating...The result is a terrific and important book...It's important because it is a morality play on the subject of loyalty. To whom are you loyal, and from who should you be able to expect loyalty?"
Entertainment Weekly
Former mobster Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, whose testimony convicted John Gotti, tells his smooth-reading tale of violent, insular Mafia life.
The New York Times Book Review, Donald E. Westlake
Sammy Gravano is the defector from the Mafia who brought John Gotti down. And "defector," as Peter Maas points out in this brilliantly constructed and grimly fascinating history-cum-memoir, is the right word.... In Mr. Maas, whose previous books include The Valachi Papers and Serpico, he has found the perfect person to tell his story, to let the spotlight shine on Sammy Gravano for once.... The result is a terrific and, I think, important book.
From Booklist
Gravano--Sammy the Bull to his Cosa Nostra cohorts--is the highest ranking member of the Mob ever to defect. By turning state's witness against his friend and head of the Gambino family, John Gotti, Gravano was allowed to serve only five years in prison for 19 murders and won the dubious distinction of having to watch his back for the rest of his life. He also hooked up with Maas, author of The Valachi Papers, spent hours talking to him, and revealed a world that readers will be both fascinated and repelled by. As a child, Gravano lived across the street from a saloon, a Mafia hangout in Bensonhurst. Labeled a "slow learner," he found the mobsters to be the one group that didn't put him down, and before long, he was in the gangster life. Gravano speaks matter-of-factly of his escalating Mafia career, which eventually involved becoming a hit man, but oddly, what emotion does come across is that of love, love for the Cosa Nostra and its traditions. Coming after all the murders and mayhem, Gravano's decision to rat on Gotti, mostly for his flamboyance of all things, is almost anticlimactic. Maas writes this page-turner in Gravano's voice, and it's a voice that readers will hear in their heads for a long while. Ilene Cooper
"Terrific...an important book...a gripping story. It's important because it is a morality play on the subject of loyalty."
--Time
"Fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't get enough of."
New York magazine
"Breathtaking...Supremely stylish."
Detroit Press
"A riveting job of detailing real Mafia life...It's quick, exciting reading and Maas deserves full marks for generally keeping the sharks of the mob from looking like dolphins. There's no chrome in the jalopy of Gravano's life."
Time
"Fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't get enough of."
Donald E. Westlake,New York Times Book Review
"Terrific...an important book...a gripping story. It's important because it is a morality play on the subject of loyalty."
Time
"Underboss is fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't get enough of."
Book Description
In March of 1992, the highest-ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to break his oath of silence testified against his boss, John Gotti.He is Salvatore ("Sammy the Bull") Gravano, second-in-command of the Gambino crime family, the most powerful in the nation. Because of Gotti's uncanny ability to escape conviction in state and federal trials despite charges that he was the Mafia's top chieftain, the media had dubbed him the "Teflon Don." With Sammy the Bull, this would all change. Today Gotti is serving life in prison without parole. And as a direct consequence of Gravano's testimony, the Cosa Nostra -- the Mafia's true name -- is in shambles. Peter Maas is the author of the international bestseller The Valachi Papers , which Rudolph Giuliani, then a federal prosecutor and now the mayor of New York City, hailed as "the most important book ever written about the Mafia in America." In Underboss, based on dozens of hours of interviews with Gravano, we are ushered as never before into the most secret inner sanctums of Cosa Nostra -- and an underworld of power, lust, greed, betrayal, deception and sometimes even honor, with the specter of violent death always poised in the wings. It is a real world we have often read and heard about from the outside; now we are able to experience it in rich, no-holds-barred detail as if we were there ourselves. Unlike his glamorous boss John Gotti, Sammy the Bull honored Costra Nostra's ancient traditions, hugging the shadows, avoiding the limelight and staying far from the flashbulbs and reporters. But he was present at such key events of the modern Costra Nostra as the sensational slaying of mob boss Paul Castellano, Gotti's predecessor, outside a Manhattan steakhouse. Compulsively readable, Gravano's revelations are of enormous historical significance. "There has never been a defendant of his stature in organized crime," the federal judge in the Gotti trial declared, "who has made the leap he has made from one social planet to another." Gravano's is a story about starting out on the street, about killing and being killed, revealing the truth behind a quarter century of shocking headlines. It is also a tragic story of a wasted life, unalterable choices and the web of lies, weakness and treachery that underlies the so-called "Honored Society."
About the Author
Peter Maas's is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Underboss. His other notable bestsellers include The Valachi Papers, Serpico, Manhunt, and In a Child's Name. He lives in New York City.
Excerpted from Underboss : Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia by Peter Maas. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter One They're bad people, but they're our bad people."Yeah, you could say i came from a pretty tough neighborhood," Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano said.The neighborhood was Bensonhurst, roughly two miles square, in southwestern Brooklyn bordering Gravesend Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.Unlike the first Italian communities in New York, such as Manhattan's Little Italy, which was being swallowed up by an aggressively expanding Chinatown, or East Harlem, clinging to a narrow strip along the East River against the inroads of a booming Hispanic population, Bensonhurst remained vibrantly and definitively Italian-American. Even today it is where recent arrivals from southern Italy and Sicily settle. In Roman Catholic churches, some masses are sung in Italian.As with other ethnic migrations in the city, the subway paved the way when in the early 1900s the first rapid transit lines linking Brooklyn to Manhattan went into service, one of them going directly from the dark and crowded tenements of Little Italy to the open spaces of Bensonhurst.It has a small-town feel. Many of the cross streets lack traffic lights. Cruising taxis, common in most of the city, are rare. Houses are mostly two-family dwellings of aluminum siding, stucco or brick with wrought-iron gates painted white and porches with their ubiquitous steel awnings. Tiny front lawns feature potted flowers and statues of the Virgin Mary and in backyards, more often than not, are vegetable gardens. Bensonhurst's main street, 18th Avenue, also officially designated Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard, is lined with Italian delicatessens, bakeries, fresh mozzarella shops, food markets overflowing with packaged products imported from Italy, pizza parlors boasting traditional wood-burning ovens and espresso bars.In Bensonhurst, everyone knows everyone else on every block. Its mainly blue-collar residents are insular, closemouthed and suspicious of outsiders. Strangers are remarked on at once. As a result, the rate of common street crimes--rapes, robberies, felony assaults--is low compared to other parts of the city, according to police statistics. Murder is a third less than the citywide average.But Bensonhurst was tough in a very special sense. A great number of these murders were mob related. It was a prime spawning ground for Cosa Nostra--"Our Thing"--which filled its ranks from local youth street gangs that hung out at candy stores and luncheonettes throughout the area. One of the original members of Cosa Nostra's national commission, Joseph Profaci, the so-called Olive Oil King because of his monopoly on the importation of olive oil from Italy, lived in Bensonhurst. So did his successor as a family boss, Joseph Colombo. One of the grandest underworld funerals ever seen in New York, complete with thirty-eight carloads of flowers, took place in Bensonhurst following the Prohibition-era slaying of a celebrated mobster named Frankie Yale, who had a falling out with Al Capone.As in a Sicilian village, Cosa Nostra's shadow loomed large over Bensonhurst and was spoken of only in whispers. "They just shoot themselves," a resident confided after two corpses were found in a car, gazing vacantly into space, each with a bullet hole behind the ear. "The thing is, you mind your own business. You don't hear nothing. You don't see nothing." Another said, "You got to admit the Mafia, whatever, keeps the neighborhood safe. You don't see all them other people coming in to mug and burglarize here. So their presence is kind of good is my opinion." Salvatore Gravano was born in Bensonhurst on March 12, 1945. He had two older sisters. Another sister and a brother had died before his arrival. His mother, Caterina, was born in Sicily and brought to America as a baby. His father, Giorlando, also from Sicily, was on the crew of a freighter when he jumped ship in Canada and slipped into the United States as an illegal alien.For Sammy and for friends and neighbors, his parents were always Kay and Gerry. English was the language of the house, except during visits from his grandmothers, who spoke a Sicilian dialect. Sammy was especially close to his maternal grandmother and picked up enough to be able to converse with her, but forgot it all after she died.He was called Sammy instead of Salvatore or Sal for as long as he can remember. Someone had said that he looked just like Uncle Sammy, a brother of his mother's, and the name stuck. The uncle was Big Sammy and he was Little Sammy. He grew up on 78th Street in the heart of Bensonhurst near 18th Avenue. His father owned the house, the middle one of three identical brick row houses, each with a garage. Steps led up to the front porch. The basement apartment was rented out, as well as an apartment on the second floor. The Gravanos lived in the middle apartment. In a small plot behind the house, Sammy's father cultivated tomatoes and beans and tended to his prized fig tree.Kay was an exceptionally skilled seamstress who worked for a Jewish dress manufacturer in Manhattan's garment center. Gerry was a house painter until he was felled by lead poisoning and could no longer continue his trade. The dress manufacturer then financed the Gravanos in a satellite factory of their own in Bensonhurst. Kay supervised the filling of the orders he sent her and rode the subway to the garment center to sew the sample dress for a forthcoming line, while Sammy's father took care of the business end. Things went so well that Gerry was able to afford the purchase of a summer cottage for $8,000 near Lake Ronkonkoma in the middle of Long Island.
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