LitPick Review
Lucky Luciano: the Real and Fake Gangster is a biography of the mobster who most people believe was the most notorious mafia boss of all time. But this book reveals that most of the stories of Luciano's great endeavors were just that: stories. Tim Newark takes the urban legends and pulls them apart to reveal the simple truth: that Luciano was a good mobster, but not the legend he is usually thought to be. He mainly attacks The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, the biography said to be taken straight from Luciano's own words. He tells us that The Last Testament was a display of the one thing that Luciano was truly notorious for: lying. So he exposes the truth of many of the legends created by the mob, Italian folklore, and even the U.S. government.
Opinion:
The thing about this book is that I found it somewhat hard to reach. I think this was mostly because I hadn't heard of Luciano before then. If I had heard any of the things the author was disproving, maybe I would have found it more interesting. In fact, the one part that I had some familiarity with, namely the murder of Thelma Todd, was the most interesting to me because I had seen a few movies of hers. So I would recommend this book to someone older who had heard more of the myths and legends of Luciano, but probably not to someone my age.
