Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia, Ground Zero

Dimatteo presents a sequel to his memoirs The president street boyshis story about growing up in a mafia family. Set in a now gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood, this book begins with the group known as the White Hand, a collection of various Irish-American gangs that ruled the 1900s. They were supplanted in the 1920s by the Italian group The Black Hand. The book also covers the 1970s and contemporary times, when the federal government used racketeering laws to break up the five Italian-American crime families operating in New York. The book is light-hearted and profane, and it is sometimes difficult to determine where the reconstructed dialogue between gangster and police comes from. With interjections by co-author Benson (Gangsters vs. Nazis), the book ranges from stories about Frankie Yale, Frank Nitti, and Al Capone to Dimatteo’s personal stories of witnessing a murder at the age of 5, driving for the mafia, and more.