<DIV>Through a riveting narrative both disturbing and disturbingly relevant to the present, <I>Blood Brotherhoods</I> shines a new light on the development of organized crime in Italy. Dickie draws on research that has never been seen before to examine the myths surrounding the three largest and most violent mafia groups--divulging the secrets, intrigues, histories and documents of the real stories behind the Honored Society’s most brutal crimes.<br><BR>Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia made infamous to Americans by television shows like <I>The Sopranos</I> and classic films like <I>The Godfather</I> is not the only dangerous criminal fraternity active in Italy. The country hosts two other major mafias: the Camorra from Naples and the ?ndrangheta, the Mafia from the poor and isolated region of Calabria that has now risen to become the most powerful mob group active today.<BR><BR>Each of these brotherhoods has its own methods, its own dark rituals, its own style of ferocity and corruption. Yet violence is only the beginning. The mafias have corrupted Italy’s institutions, drastically curtailed the life-chances of its citizens, evaded justice, and set up their own self-interested meddling as an alternative to the courts.<BR><BR>The staggering reach of organized crime in Italy hangs over a nation racked by debt, political paralysis, and widespread corruption. The largest mafia factions control much of Europe’s wholesale cocaine trade and about three percent of Italy’s total GDP. These are not solitary or static criminal organisms, nor are the Mafiosi that comprise them primitive gangsters. Sicily might have given the world the term ?mafia,’ but the history of organized crime in Italy is as much about Italy’s weakness as it is about the mafia’s strength. Italy itself is revealed to be a criminal ecosystem and a key player, in its own right, within the bowels of the Honored Society.<br><BR><I>Blood Brotherhoods</I> is a book of breathtaking ambition. It blends archival detective work, passionate narrative, and shrewd analysis to bring Italy’s unique criminal underworld, and the three terrifying criminal brotherhoods that have evolved within it, to life on the page.<BR></DIV>