The riveting, often bloody account of how the fifty-year attack by the federal government virtually extinguished the nation's most powerful crime syndicate

In the critically acclaimed American Mafia, Thomas Reppetto narrated the ferocious ascendancy of organized crime in America. In this fascinating sequel, he follows the mob from its peak into a shadowy period of decline as the government, no longer able to deny its existence, made subduing the Mafia a matter of national priority.

Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience to tell the stories of the Mafia's twentieth-century leadership, showing how men such as Sam Giancana and John Gotti became household names. Crusaders like Robert Kennedy led concerted—if sometimes sporadic—attacks against organized crime. As the battles between the feds and the Mafia moved from the streets to the courtrooms, Reppetto describes how it came to resemble a conflict between sovereign powers.

In direct, shoot-from-the-hip prose, Reppetto chronicles a turning point in American Mafia history, and offers the provocative theory that, given the right formula of connections and shrewd business, a new generation of multinational criminals may be poised to take up the Mafia's mantle.