Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia - Softcover

Maas, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061096644 ISBN 13: 9780061096648

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1997

Synopsis

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 honour, with the spectre 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 honoured 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 organised 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 "Honoured Society."

About this title

Review

‘Centring around family, greed, power and death, the real world of the Mafia is just as brutal and compelling as it seemed in the hugely successful Godfather movies.’
Daily Mirror

‘Brilliantly constructed and grimly fascinating.’
New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover

MURDER. DECEPTION. BETRAYAL.
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK.

Sammy the Bull Gravano is the highest ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to defect. Second in command to John Gotti in the nation’s most powerful crime family, Gravano’s eyewitness testimony sent Gotti, the so called “Teflon Don”, to prison for the rest of his life.

In breaking his blood oath of silence, Sammy the Bull brings us, as never before, into the uppermost inner sanctums of Cosa Nostra as if we were there ourselves – a secret underworld of power, lust, greed, betrayal and deception, with the spectre of violent death always waiting in the wings.

”Centring around family, greed, power and death, the real world of the Mafia is just as brutal and compelling as it seemed in the hugely successful'Godfather' movies.”
DAILY MIRROR

“Brilliantly constructed and grimly fascinating.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Peter Maas is the author of the international best-seller '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”.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061096644
• ISBN 13: 9780061096648
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 512