NOLA Mafia Literature

[Etna]

Can anyone reccomend some good literature (books, articles or documents and documentaries) with good historical info on the new orleans mafia?

[Pogo The Clown]

Mafia Kingfish by John Davis is about the New Orleans family. I haven't read it though.


Pogo

[dixiemafia]

Yep Mafia Kingfish is the best book on NOLA.

[Antiliar]

Miriam Davis, The Axe Man of New Orleans

Gary Krist, Empire of Sin

John Davis, Mafia Kingfish (but disregard his conspiracy theories)

[sdeitche]

Also:

Mr. New Orleans by Matthew Randazzo

Bad Bet on the Bayou (more recent/1990s history)

I touch on New Orleans and the ties to Tampa in my books

I think a good overall NOLA book is needed.

[UTC]

I found Davis tough to read.

[Angelo Santino]

I found Davis tough to read.

You weren't alone. Id recommend Mafia III the game over Mafia Kingfish as a more accurate portrayal.

A word from the author: "Paul Castellano? Oh, that was a greedy bastard. Capos delivering $100,000 every week and he's saying "More, more more!" That's a build up from the established theory. Most likely he was asked his opinion on P.Castellano and went on what he already read. Shit builds. Like when Funzi Tieri was arrested with ten C-notes in his pocket, it become "Everytime Funzi left his house he carried ten crisp 100 dollar bills, not 100 more, not 100 less." He got arrested one time with that and it kinda snowballed into a "fact" you read about the man.

[JeremyTheJew]

The movie Vendetta w Christopher Walken is about the lynching and first case of the mafia in NOLA.


Also.... awesome historical fiction booked that was pretty accurate called CAPO by Watson I think.

[kasparoza]

Also:

Mr. New Orleans by Matthew Randazzo

Bad Bet on the Bayou (more recent/1990s history)

I touch on New Orleans and the ties to Tampa in my books

I think a good overall NOLA book is needed.

Mr. New Orleans is one of my favorite books. Really fun read. I like Matthew also. Smart guy.

[ledblimp]

Two good books on the 1890/91 David Hennessey/lynching incident are Deep Water and Crescent City Lynchings. Vendetta has some good info but, IMO, Gambino had a forgone conclusion on why things happened and an obvious bias. His theory on James Houston orchestrating events to take over Macheca's business doesn't hold any water.

Empire of Sin is an awesome read. Gangs of New Orleans (also titled Gangs of the French Quarter) by Herbert Asbury, same guy that wrote Gangs of New York, has some good info though not much on actual OC and it's dated as it was written in the late 30's. More of a history of gambling and vice up till then.

Mafia Kingfish......unfortunately the best book out there on Marcello. Davis had a lot of mistakes in there, two glaring ones about the Black Diamond meeting in May 1947 when Marcello took over. Davis has Frank Todaro attending the meeting. Todaro died in 1944. He has Sam Carollo choosing the site of the meeting (though not attending?) but Carollo was deported a month before. Davis also writes about two of Marcello's victims killed in the Willswood tavern. Gene Mano and Constantino Masotto. Mano was actually Masotto's alias in NOLA. He was hiding out here from his Family after murdering and robbing his own sister. Newspaper accounts of the time, 1942/43 exposed this so it wasn't a mystery. Makes you question other info in there.

Mr. New Orleans I haven't read yet. I've heard is a good read but have also heard from locals who knew him and are familiar with some of the events in there that it's 90% bullshit and Frenchy Brouliette made himself out to be way more than he was.

A good read is the Last Madame, about a notorious NOLA madame named Norma Wallace. Though not strictly about OC there's a lot of familiar names, events and history in there.

[Chaps]

Another good one that I recently came across was Carlos Marcello: The Man Behind The JFK Assassination. Now, for the record, I'm always leery about the whole conspiratorial aspect of these books but this one did give some good historical background on Marcello and NOLA. The author is Stefano Vaccara.

[ledblimp]

Another good one that I recently came across was Carlos Marcello: The Man Behind The JFK Assassination. Now, for the record, I'm always leery about the whole conspiratorial aspect of these books but this one did give some good historical background on Marcello and NOLA. The author is Stefano Vaccara.

Have thought about picking this one up but was kinda thinking it was just a re-hash of Mafia Kingfish.