Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-372) and index.

A riveting history of the Mafia from 1860s Sicily to 1960s America-as narrated by a former heist expert and Gambino family mobster. The culmination Louis Ferrante's exhaustive research delving deep into Sicily's socio-economic-political roots, Borgata: Rise of Empire will finally reveal exactly how and why this infamous secret society formed inside Sicilian culture. Ferrante then engages in the art of storytelling by carefully selecting stories about the mafia in Sicily that allow him to follow the main characters to America, where most arrive as fugitives from Italian justice. Across the Atlantic, the storyline picks up in places like New York and New Orleans, where the clannish Sicilians quickly realize the importance of diversity as they forge new alliances with other recently arrived ethnic groups as the borgata becomes the premier organized criminal network in the country. After planting their flags in cities across America, the adolescent American mafia realizes how to corrupt America's police and political establishment, and they become experts at bribing public officials, allowing them to extend their tentacles into every level of American society. In this first volume, Ferrante traces the mafia's phenomenal "rise of empire" through larger-than-life characters such as Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seigel, Albert Anastasia, and other legendary mobsters as they provide alcohol to the American public during Prohibition, penetrate industrial labor unions, practically take over the island of Cuba and, with extraordinary vision, create the gambling mecca of Las Vegas.