... while the book colorfully summons what Mr. Shorto calls 'the era of zoot suits and Studebakers,' it doesn’t romanticize the mob.

... a beautifully rendered, spellbinding saga about family secrets and taboos.

In the end, this is not a mob story. It’s a story of family dynamics. Of love and loss and betrayal. Of Shorto’s hometown. Of his own relationship with his father and his father’s relationship with his father. In other words, it’s a family memoir. Whether Shorto likes it or not. His reluctance — perhaps a mere literary device — is a roadblock. But once Shorto’s on the highway, steering us along with his usual humor and eye for quirky detail, settling an hour from his hometown for easy access, we are with him. All the way, as Sinatra would say..

Do we really need another Mafioso-in-the-family memoir?.

While Shorto is successful at finding out what his grandfather did—as well as the affairs he had, the people he swindled, the drinking problem that tanked his illicit career—he struggles to learn more about just who his grandfather was.

Shorto combines academic sources with news stories, court documents, FBI files, and extensive interviews with his namesake grandfather’s surviving associates and family members to produce a truly excellent, often harrowing investigation. Clearly, it was important to Shorto to research, understand, and confront his family’s history, and he has created a compelling, fresh, and resonant take on a key and fascinating aspect of American history. This will have wide appeal..

In a narrative full of sharp twists, Shorto learns, to his surprise, that his own father served jail time 'as a teenage gun wielder'—though in later years, his father, thoroughly assimilated, turned to sales and the think-and-grow-rich slogans of the postwar era.

... insightful.