October 2020 Issue contents - Timeline
Timeline
Events related to the life and career of Nicola Gentile from the 1880s to the 1970s.
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Sunday, October 18, 2020
Timeline
Events related to the life and career of Nicola Gentile from the 1880s to the 1970s.
Locations
October 2020 Issue contents - Locations
Locations
Addresses in the United States and Italy related to the life and career of Nicola Gentile.
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Gentile's Pueblo connection
October 2020 Issue contents - Feature
Pellegrino Scaglia’s murder fractured Mafia
Gentile’s Pueblo connection
By Sam Carlino
"Nicola Gentile was a respected figure in the Onorata Società (Honored Society), commonly referred to as La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia. His book, Vita di Capomafia, was the first 'tell-all' written by a high-ranking member of the elusive secret society. In the volume, Gentile provided details about famous historical occurrences as well as many arcane events. He discussed the little known Pueblo Colorado Mafia. Gentile’s connection to Pueblo boss Pellegrino Scaglia effectively put Pueblo on the map of Mafia host cities. Recently discovered information about Gentile and the notorious Carlino brothers has been related in the book Colorado’s Carlino Brothers: A Bootlegging Empire..."
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Excerpt: Secret Societies
October 2020 Issue contents - Excerpt
Secret societies: gang rule in New York
Giuseppe Masseria and Frankie Yale
By Jon Black
Excerpt from Secret Societies by Jon Black: "Salvatore D’Aquila, who took on the role of U.S. Mafia boss of bosses following Giuseppe Morello’s 1910 incarceration, was described as a cunning and authoritarian figure. His reign over the U.S. Mafia lasted until his murder in 1928, when he was replaced by Giuseppe Masseria. A Sicilian immigrant from western Sicily, Masseria arrived in Manhattan around 1900. He began his criminal career as a professional burglar. In 1907, twenty-one-year-old Masseria received a suspended sentence after breaking into an apartment on Elizabeth Street. Later that year, he was arrested and discharged after making Black Hand threats against his own family..."
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Murder of George Maisano
October 2020 Issue contents - Feature
Los Angeles, 1906:
The Murder of George Maisano
By Justin Cascio
"Before Joseph Ardizzone became one of the first crime bosses of Los Angeles, he was the central figure in a series of murders. The shooting of George Maison and the revenge killings that followed powerfully illustrate the transition between the old and the new Mafias in America. According to legend, the violence originated in a long-standing feud between the Matranga and Ardizzone families, and it initiated a chain of events that led to the consolidation of the Mafia in Los Angeles in the early years of Prohibition. However, the story of Joseph Fusco and his fiancee, Angela, published after the September 1906 murder of Joseph Cuccia, suggests another origin of the conflict..."
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The Gentile brother not mentioned
October 2020 issue contents - Feature
The Gentile brother not mentioned
"Nicola Gentile wrote about his older brother Vincent. They crossed paths on occasion in the United States and traveled together for extended periods. But he did not discuss another older sibling, Gerlando..."
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Loprestos crossed paths with Gentile
October 2020 issue contents - Family History
Family History:
A crooked branch on the family tree?
Loprestos crossed paths with Gentile
By Michael O’Haire
"Prior to a few years ago, I had never heard of Nicolo Gentile. Most of what I knew about the Mafia related to 'Lucky Luciano' or Al Capone. I happened to discover Gentile’s autobiography, Vita di Capomafia (1963), while I was doing genealogical research into the Sicilian side of my family. Gentile was influential in Mafia organizations across the United States. He wrote about other crime figures, including Pellegrino Scaglia in Pueblo, Colorado; Gregorio Conti in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Paul Palmeri of Niagara Falls, New York. Those men were important Mafiosi in their own cities. One of the men in my family history, Pietro Carollo, seemed to have run in the same circles as Gentile..."
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Nicola Gentile in context
October 2020 issue contents - Analysis
Analysis:
Agencies were slow to use Mafia revelations
Nicola Gentile in context
By David Critchley
"Having explored the great historical value of Gentile’s life story, we end this issue with an examination of the impacts of the Gentile exposures on law enforcement and criminal justice policies. Gentile’s account of life in his Onorata Società or Cosa Nostra never achieved prominence in either field, though known to scholars since the 1960s. We attempt to understand why his published experiences did not have the real-world impact they deserved..."
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Books
October 2020 issue contents - Books
Books
Announcements for Colorado's Carlino Brothers by Sam Carlino, Secret Societies by Jon Black, The Italian Squad by Andrew Paul Mele.
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How has coronavirus affected the Mafia?
October 2020 issue contents - columns
The Warner Files:
How has the coronavirus affected the Mafia?
By Richard N. Warner
"When pandemics hit they can hit anyone, and those who live in the world of organized crime are no exception. According to our present understanding, the current pandemic originated in the Chinese province of Wuhan sometime between September and November 2019 and spread to the United States, hitting the Seattle area around January 15, 2020. The earliest recorded death in the U.S. was in Seattle about three weeks later on February 6. By April 28, there already were one million confirmed cases in the U.S. and more than 200,000 deaths worldwide, according to the Worldometer, a site which tracks coronavirus cases. The pandemic was just getting started..."
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Discrepancies, distortions, deceptions
October 2020 issue contents - columns
Just One More Thing:
Discrepancies, distortions, deceptions
By Thomas Hunt
"While a good amount of the Nicola Gentile story has been verified as factual, the different versions of the story contain some glaring inconsistencies, some exaggerations and some outright falsehoods. Following the release of the published book, Vita di Capomafia, the FBI in February, 1964, compared that volume with the Bureau’s own translation of an earlier Gentile manuscript. The official comparison revealed a few inconsequential differences..."
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Obituary: Martha Macheca Sheldon, 84
October 2020 issue contents - Obituary
"Martha Macheca Sheldon, award-winning author of a New Orleans underworld history, died August 29, 2020, following a valiant battle against cancer. She was about two weeks shy of her eighty-fifth birthday..."
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Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Ad: Troublesome Robbery Gang
New advertiser in October 2020 issue:
One of the Most Troublesome Robbery Gangs: The Murders and Crimes of George McKeever and Francis McNeiley by Jeffery S. King.
Ad: Colorado's Carlino Brothers
New advertiser in October 2020 issue.
Colorado's Carlino Brothers: A Bootlegging Empire by Sam Carlino.
Monday, October 5, 2020
About formats and pricing
Formats and pricing
Dealing as completely as possible (through a half-year timetable) with the lengthy and complex underworld career of Nicola Gentile resulted in an especially lengthy issue of Informer (scheduled for release by October 19) and raised concerns over delivery of the issue to our readership. In its traditional, printed and bound magazine format, this issue reaches 214 pages, more than double the size of last year's large Maranzano-focused issue and about triple the size of the average Informer issue. With production costs tied to page count, it has become a particularly expensive document. In order to keep Informer as accessible as possible, we have added one new format - a black-and-white trade paperback - to our usual list of editions.
We gave some thought to decreasing the print magazine's page count through other means. It could have been achieved, for example, by eliminating article endnotes and/or by removing images and/or by dramatically reducing article type size and leading. These options were rejected as incompatible with Informer's mission and tradition. We decided that the usual print magazine format needed to be maintained, though its price tag might put it out of reach for some of its audience.
As usual, we are offering Informer in an electronic magazine (PDF) format. The pricing of this format is less influenced by the issue's page count, and we have been able to hold the sale price below $10 (US). Following the example of recent issues, we are also offering this issue as a Kindle-compatible e-book through Amazon.com. These electronic editions provide access to journal contents at a more reasonable cost, but they do not address the wants and needs of readers who prefer or require a physical form for their reading material.
For that reason, we reformatted the issue as a six-inch by nine-inch paperback book. Though this resulted in a hefty, 384-page volume, the printing cost calculations for books differ from those of magazines and allowed us to make the paperback format available for about half the price of the magazine. In the process, some filler material needed to be sacrificed, image color was lost and page layout had to be simplified. But the content of featured articles and their annotations were preserved.
We understand that increasing available formats could cause some confusion. We hope that our readers will forgive the complication and understand this attempt to provide flexible pricing of this important material. We plan to make the October 2020 issue available in the following editions (expected retail pricing shown):
- Printed bound magazine through MagCloud ($47.50)
- Printed softcover book through Amazon ($24.95)
- Electronic PDF magazine through MagCloud ($9.49)
- Electronic Kindle-compatible through Amazon ($9.49)
Update (Oct. 17)
Some problems in proof copies of the MagCloud print edition forced us to create a MagCloud electronic PDF that did not include Informer's usual searchable text. (Searchable text remains available in the Kindle e-book format.) We have decided to add two additional formats - a searchable PDF and an EPUB-format e-book - which will soon be available through Google Play Books. These both will be priced at $9.49.
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