Lanza's Mob: The Mafia and San Francisco

by Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo

Overview

Presenting sociological as well as historical perspectives, this book supplies readers with a fascinating, unprecedented look at the most successful organized-crime family they've probably never heard of.

From the 1920s until the early 21st century, one Sicilian mob family defied everyone from the California attorney general to J. Edgar Hoover to chart their own American Dream. Unlike their flashier rivals in New York and Chicago who met their end by the knife, the bullet, or a judge's gavel, this crime family prospered and grew alongside their adopted home of San Francisco. This book tells how they did it.

Readers will learn how the Lanzas managed to retain control of their patch from the end of Prohibition through the Summer of Love and into the beginnings of the dot-com era, gaining insight into not only what the west-coast branch of the Mob did, but also why they did it. The documentation of how this mostly unknown crime syndicate formed, evolved, and eventually folded is set against the backdrop of the city of San Francisco transforming itself from a gritty port and manufacturing hub dominated by Italian- and Irish-Americans into the multicultural intellectual and services capital it is today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440842160
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/27/2016
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo, Esq., is a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco, CA.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xv

Notes on Terms xix

Chronology xxi

1 Disarming the Bodyguard: San Francisco Mafia Myths and Realities 1

2 Sicilian Realities and American Dreams 11

3 To the Mean Streets of New York 21

4 Go West, Young Man, 'Cause It's Prohibition 33

5 Ferri Meets His Maker 43

6 The End of Prohibition and the Big Strike 61

7 Marone, We Can't Use the Wharf No More? 73

8 DeJohn Takes the Big Sleep 89

9 The Kefauver Show 103

10 The Apalachin Debacle 121

11 From Anonymity to "Top Hoodlum" 133

12 Legitimate Businesses 141

13 The Swinging 1960s 147

Epilogue: The Lion in Winter 153

Notes 157

Selected Bibliography 197

Index 201