Fascinating overview of the Chicago crime syndicate known as the Outfit. Russo reveals how Al Capone and his hiers built America's most powerful crime organization. He details how the Outfit took over Hollywood, created Las Vegas, and gave Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy the presidency. Book shows how the Outfit and corporate America are two sides of the same coin. Fascinating account of Welshman Curley Humphreys, who was the brains behind the rise of the Outfit

Today where we have legalized OFF-TRACK BETTING, CASINO GAMING, LOTTO, MUSIC TOP 40, INTEREST ONLY LOANS and dubious ELECTION RESULTS; we have to salute the pioneers that made it all possible -THE OUTFIT!

The "boys" from Chicago, the mob, the syndicate whatever name you like. Vice lords that ran yesterdays rackets that became todays visionary and highly profitable "legit" business enterprises. Untold revenue for city, state and federal government and they didn't have to use any force to get it. Author Gus Russo has created the definitive word on the subject of THE OUTFIT and organized crime after Al Capone. His epic research and source of interviews, brings all the loose ends together. The cast of characters has always been well known, but now their role is defined in American criminal, social and economic history. Russo explains how these "underworld" guys could operate and become so powerful for so long, due to the full collusion of the so-called "legit upperworld" and all those ever so-righteous politicians.

You could say it was none other than the US Government itself, that started the ball rolling with its insane idea of prohibition. From there on, the drinkers, gamblers, drug abusers and other sinners amongst us, allowed THE OUTFIT and New York's COMMISSION and other major crime families, to become our exclusive source of supply. And if someone got out of line, got a bit greedy, they got took care of. For over sixty years there was an order to the organized criminality and there were rules and rituals. The book details THE OUTFIT's role in getting FDR, Hary Truman and JFK into the White House. The creation of mega gambling in Cuba and Las Vegas. Other rackets like the "wire service", the "numbers" and loan sharking. But most of all it's about the political
corruption that has become an even more accepted practice in America today. An ideal companion to this is Gus Russo's SUPERMOB -The Sidney Korshak story, also available on Amazon.

I had about three books I was reading before I opened up this one but quickly found that I could not put it down. Its pages turn as if they were spun by reels. And what I liked best, perhaps, was his introductory section on Chicago history. I am a little weak in that department and enjoyed his description of the city on pillars that gave rise to the term "underworld." If you ever were hazy about the background of the bosses in Casino you won't be after you finish the Outfit--which is actually a name that Joe Pesci uses to describe their thing at the start of the Scorsese picture. Russo's narrative makes clear the corporate nature of these particular Mafiosi which was crucial to their success. Their vision was crafted by Johnny Torrio and confirmed by Al Capone along with Joe Accardo. The sections on the fifties and sixties were the most interesting as were the roles played by LBJ and Ramsay Clark in their partial rebirth after the death of JFK. This is a book both entertaining and educational.

I considered myelf an expert on mob activities until I read this very well written book. No knowledgeable gangster "fan" should be without this page-turner in their library.

Well-written, well-researched, well-thought-out, oh well...Though the author researched a lot, just check out in the bibliography about how much he relied on from on-line sources. He cites articles off websites! Some of his book sources (Double Cross, The Last Testiment of Lucky Luciano, etc.) are not credible and have been discredited as unreliable, innane fluff. I personnally thought the book was an okay read but not reliable as a whole.

Russo's contention that a double hit in Southern Illinois is payback for an unrelated-to-the-mob kidnapping half a decade earlier is just plain untrue (I know this for a fact, for I thoroughly researched this recently for something unrelated to this book and this incident was solely a local St. Louis area affair unrelated to the Outfit in Chicago). He tries to put Murray Humphreys in everything, involved with everything, and he probably was--but he relies on this Outfit bigwig's ex-wife for most of the information obtained in this book, and he regards her as some kind of Outfit associate (she is the source of the inaccurate information for the double murder mentioned above). No way was she that involved in Humpfreys' business affairs! If she were, when he divorced her she would have simply disappeared or wound up as "trunk music."

If you want an entertaining read, you'll enjoy this book. If you're looking for historical accuracy, buyer beware.

This is the best mob book I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. The author's style is intelligent, witty, detailed, and extremely personable. He tells us so many facts about the Chicago mob, from its incarnation in the early 20th century to the 1990's, that I felt I was experiencing a living history class on the Outfit while I read. Russo supplies his readers with wonderfully colorful accounts of the "Chicago Boys" and their outrageous acts when they ruled Chicago. One of the most fascinating characters, about whom I never knew before, was the Welsh genius who essentially played consigliere to the Outfit for several decades. Curly Humphreys was never mnade because of his Welsh blood, but he could have been the smartest Boss the mob ever had. He came up with the 5th Amendment dodge that kept gangsters from having to tell the Kefauver or McClelland Committees anything damning about themselves or their gangster pals. He actually knew more about the Constitution than any of the Senators or lawyers attached to the Committees! He was brilliant.

Russo pulls no punches when recounting the Outfit's numerous murders and cruelties. He does not glamorize the mob. At the same time, he offers fascinating insights into the minds and personalities of everyone from Johnny Torrio to Al Capone to Johnny Roselli, humanizing them. He throws in some juicy tidbits about "friends" of the Outfit like Frank Sinatra. He also provides a behind-the-scene look into how FDR, Truman, and Kennedy became President with the Outfit's help. In addition, the stories about Chicago politicians and cops (far more corrupt than the mob guys) could make a whole book. Some of the facts presented, all with verifiable authentication, made my jaw drop.

Anyone who loves mob stories must get this book. You won't believe what you read.

Detailed account of Chicago crime family's growth from pre-Capone days to death of mastermind Murray Humphreys in 1972, after which the chronicle trails off rapidly. Familiar highlights are there, showing how Chicago's corruptive tentacles reach into worlds of legalized gambling, labor unions, show business, and politics, with many household names surfacing, e.g. Kennedys, Sinatra, Monroe, Nixon, Hoffa, Truman, et. al. Anecdotes are numerous and fascinating, demonstrating once again how thoroughly the underworld intertwines with what author Russo terms the "upperworld". (For a provocative theory of how and why these two worlds interlock symbiotically, check out Peter Dale Scott's Deep Politics and the Death of JFK.) Though much of the material is familiar to students of the Chicago mob, Russo's treatment remains on the whole a worthwhile addition.

Two points for consideration. It's evident from the text that Russo relies greatly on Jeanne Humphreys, Murray's second wife, for fresh material. As a result, the cool and calculating master fixer is treated in near glowing terms that place him at the center of mob activities in a way that unfortunately obscures the role of other central figues such as Tony Accardo, Paul Ricca, and others. Moreover, such key underbosses as Jackie Cerone and Willie Daddano, heavyweights in their own right, get only passing mention at best. In fact, the text appears skewed both qualitatively and quantitatively in behalf of Humphreys such that it's difficult to survey how the vectors of power within the Chicago mob really played out. And though the work is aptly subtitled, "The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America", there's little sense conveyed of how the Outfit works internally.

The second point concerns the Afterword, a provocative perspective on upperworld and underworld crime and criminals. Many readers may find a comparison between the two unwelcome and reject it out of hand. Nonetheless, Russo presents his argument in a way that demands thoughtful consideration, drawing intelligently upon the class bias of our criminal justice system and its tendency to focus on street crime to the exclusion of the subtler, white-collar varieties. Still and all, there's another side to crime that Russo doesn't touch on, namely the international arena. To quote from Marine Corps General Smedley Butler's candid writings in "War is a Racket" (available on Amazon), "I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism." -- Provocative words from a man who should know. Moreover, to give the same point a more topical thrust : Aside from the politics, just what is the moral difference between plundering the Teamster's pension fund, on one hand, and grabbing off the oil fields of Iraq, on the other. Raising a question of this sort is not meant to imply there are no important distinctions; it is meant to imply that where big government, big business, and big underworld are concerned the distinctions really do blur.

This is about as good as it gets in terms of criminal history. I agree with others that some of the secondary sources Russo cites are questionable (my eyes crossed when he cited the discredited "Last Testament of Lucky Luciano"), but Russo does an excellent job of placing the Outfit in historical context and telling their tale. Much previous writing on American organized crime has focused on the fractious and colorful New York families, but after you do a certain amount of reading, it begins to occur to you that the guys in Chicago seem to have a finger in every pie, but (after Capone) a knack for staying out of the papers. Russo makes the argument that the Outfit was actually much more powerful and cohesive than the New York families and had a much greater influence on American politics and culture. He convinced me.

I am also convinced by Russo's basic thesis -- that "upperworld crime" utterly dwarfs underworld crime, both in terms of dollar volume and its affect on society. For example, it would take a thousand Outfits a thousand years to steal as much money as Wall Street did during the dotcom bubble.

Thorough, well-organized, but never dry, this book will probably stand as the best work on the subject for many years to come.