Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-03
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Guardian
`Eye-opening account of our criminal planet...A stark illustration of the simple point that underpins Glenny's epic of reportage'

Sunday Times Culture
`Misha Glenny made his reputation as a BBC reporter during the break-up of the Soviet empire and in the Balkan wars. Those experiences introduced him to the murky, bloody, terrifyingly successful operations of the East European mafias, dominated by Russians. For this book, Glenny has extended his researches worldwide. He describes gang operations in Bombay, sex slavery and money-laundering in Israel, the Canadian marijuana trade, Nigerian investment scams, Brazilian cyber-crime and much else. His message is that the global marketplace has empowered criminals on a huge and terrifying scale.... He tells a grisly story very well'

Mail on Sunday
`Like a journalistic Indiana Jones he has travelled the world in search of his prey, displaying impressive stamina, intellectual chutzpah and physical bravery on the way... This is the most important non-fiction book of the year so far'

Customer Reviews

Indepth Study
Misha Glenny delves deep into organised crime in this study of a post cold-war, globalised world. Indepth and at times utterly fascinating this book covers a wide blanket of criminals from the Balkans to India, from Colombia to Russia and beyond.
However the linkage between each criminal group is not evident and there is not a significant coherant argument concerning globalisation. On one hand he appears to advocate the legalisation of all drugs whilst on the other going into great detail concerning tobacco smuggling and counterfeiting and the negative effects this causes.
The pace is a times frantic and it is sometimes hard to keep up with the various names of individuals and groups which at times gives the book a disjointed feel.
However overall this is an incredibly well researched, valuable modern social history.

McMafia - powered by illegal drugs
McMafia is an argument for the legalisation of drugs. Without explicitly demanding such a thing, it gives the best possible argument for legalising all narcotics; that drug money is the engine of the McMafia.
Misha Glenny covers many more McMafia activities; cigarette smuggling, investment scams, slavery, fake goods, intimidation etc, but behind them all lies drugs and the massive profits they engender.
He points out that we in the west are largely to blame. We buy the fake DVDs, hire the slaves and turn a blind eye to the sweatshops. Mainly, we buy the drugs.
The author's point is that so long as the drug barons grow fat on human misery, so will the McMafia thrive.
A riveting read.

A dazzling exposition of modern organised crime
In McMafia, Misha Glenny meets some of the underworld's villains and scammers and puts a human face to the vast conspiracies which we hear so much about, but ultimately know so little. He is an entertaining, affable guide, a meticulous researcher and, it would appear, a brave journalist. He writes with candour, incisiveness and occasional humour. This is a very different work to his books on the Balkans, but the skills that made them such good books are much in the evidence here as well.

Glenny takes us on a world tour of global crime: from the insidious backstreets of the ex-Soviet bloc, where James Bond-esque baddies lurk in every corner, to Nigeria, Brazil, Japan and China. Although the chapter titles - such as `The Future of Organised Crime' - suggest a thematic approach, it is more geographic than that, which actually makes it all the more readable.

My only problems are with the title - which suggests that the global underworld somehow replicates himself everywhere and is anodyne for it, when Glenny shows that it is not - and the lack of over-arching hypothesis - this isn't a book about the globalisation of crime, we are told at the end, when the preceding 400 pages would suggest that it is.

But as part travelogue, part social history this is nevertheless an excellent read. It is an urgent, compelling book, which I read over only a couple of days and would recommend to anyone with the vaguest interest in organised crime.