Product Description

Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino set out to destroy the Mafia. In 1992, aware that the magistrates didn't have the support of the Italian government, the Mafia assassinated them. The public outcry demanded their work was completed, which led to the toppling of crucial political alliances.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82680 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent Cadavers.
Brilliant, incisive and ludicrously well researched and detailed. It isfluent and contains details which are hard to find in dozens of otherbooks on exactly the same topic. Stille has excelled with this book and Ihave frequently referenced this book for my thesis.The themes are horrificbut the book, brilliant, reads like a novel.Buy it.

A brilliant book, read it!
A brilliant book detailing the heroic attempts of the Italian judiciary to combat the Mafia, forget Puzo and "The Godfather". This book shows the real Mafia slaughtering men, women and children in their desire to hold onto power. If Hollywood needs an epic about the Mafia then the stories of the lives of Falcone and Borsallino should be it. Their deaths are stain on the reputation of Italy.

If you want to read a book on the Mafia this is it!

Brilliant (but numbing) story well written and researched
I can add little to all the other reviewers great praise for a book thatcompeletely destroys the Godfather/Sopranos image that seems to grip themedia whenever the Mafia/Cosa Nostra is covered. Highly recommended!
As this book shows in painstaking detail, the continual dangerousinterplay between endemic corruption and the related violence it producedin Sicily alongside the Italian political model in Sicily and Rome of thepost war years created a culture that was ultimately to cost Italy interms of economic development and lead in part to the country's majorbudget deficits of recent years.
It took the courage of the two heroes of this story plus many others namedin the book, most of whom were sadly killed before the final fruits oftheir efforts were seen, to make a difference and get prosections thathurt the criminal gangs operating in Italy and other Southern Italyregions. That this was against endless obstacles and bureaucracy oftenpolitically motivated shows what real heroes these men were. Stille'shandling of all the characters and the many different political andcriminal elements and events is what makes the book such a memorableread.
My reason for using the description "numbing" is that sadly over its 400odd pages, just the sheer volume of murders that occurred leaves onenumbed, especially at the stories of the Corleonese gang's war of outrightextermination of any rivals.