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Epicurus.com - Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System
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List Price: $69.99
Our Price: $53.19
Your Save: $ 16.80 ( 24% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Tantor Media
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1060945
EAN: 9781400135578
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 1400135575
Label: Tantor Media
Manufacturer: Tantor Media
Number Of Items: 9
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Publisher: Tantor Media
Studio: Tantor Media
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Editorial Reviews:
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A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Savianoa (TM)s gripping nonfiction account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The other mobs in Italy
Comment: Interesting overview of how integrated the mob is in Italian society. We hear all the time about the Sicilians - this book is strictly about Italian crime syndicates. Soon to be released as a movie...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting look into real-life crime
Comment: In America, we've almost romanticized the gangster lifestyle with depictions like those in the Godfather movies, Goodfellas, and the Sopranos. The diminished public presence of the American mafia has probably allowed us to forget the dark, violent gears that allow these machines to run. In this book, Roberto Saviano vividly describes the workings and rivalries of the Naples area, a place where crime families have nearly crippled the city.
When you begin reading this, it is evident that some of the translation from Italian to English did not come through clearly. Some of Saviano's metaphors and similies come across as downright odd, but blame this on the difference of the languages rather than the author or the translator. The book jumps around to different topics in a seemingly random way. Nonetheless Saviano's writing is clear enough to show just how horrifying and violent these criminal endeavors can be.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in organized crime nonfiction. We're saturated with fictional stories of the mafia, and it's truly striking to hear these real-life accounts of extreme violence and corruption. An interesting book all around, never feeling tedious despite the oddities of translation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Boring
Comment: I picked this up expecting an interesting and in-depth look at the author's infiltration of the Mafia in Sicily. I didn't make it far enough to see if it actually happened. This book failed the 50 page rule, meaning that it didn't get to the point and was not interesting enough to compel me to read past page 50.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Stilted Trip Through Unfamiliar Italy
Comment: A full-throttle look at Cammora crime from the nitty gritty ground level, "Gomorrah" is a look behind the curtain that suffers from an author with too intimate an approach to his subject. For a Neopolitan perhaps the geography, family and clan names, capos and underbosses, murders, victims and characters are a uniting thread; but, to the average American reader I think this translation of Saviano's originial Italian work lacks some critical elements that would help to make this story more than the timeline of crime it ends up being.
There is no real protagonist to unite the series of seemingly only loosely-related vignettes, unless one counts Saviano himself, but his role is more that of tour guide, standard-bearer and narrator.
Mixed in are some really interesting details about Cammora business, the purpose and organization of the system, and the lifestyle both for the connected and unconnected. But, these are sprinkled in among dizzying references to different criminal systems, families, clans and characters. Further complicating matters, the translation (I can't speak for whether it reflects the original work) is stark and breathless. In spite of the occasional turn of phrase, metaphor or analogy, the writing is spare and unadorned.
All in all, a staccato and stilted trip through what remains -- even after reading -- an unfamiliar vantage point on Italy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What happens in Naples happens everywhere...
Comment: I was stationed in Naples from '91-'94. I roamed all over as military police. I saw corners of Naples that many Americans living there never even dream of visiting. My knowledge was based in hear-say though and I have now many years later begun to study the city and the country to better understand what I lived there. This book has been a real eye-opener. I suspect it is slightly sensationalistic but he tackles a topic that few authors want to and his life is on the line for it today. Hopefully more Italians will follow his lead and step up and make their society a better one free of the crime that haunts their land today. This is a long, long way from the other Italian books that I love - the ones by Francis Mayes.
I was shocked to see that I spent much of my free time in the heart of Camorra territory - Casal di Principe. I have friends there and we never spoke about the mafia. I was in that town day and night many, many times.
FWIW I felt safer in Naples at all hours than I have in many American cities and hope to go back someday for another extended visit.
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