The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia

From Barnes & Noble

Sal Polisi, the author of this book, belongs to a small fraternity: still-living former New York mobsters. (He lives under an underworld death sentence to this day.) Of those, his life has been more eventful and dangerous than most, spanning from the last great glory years of the Five Families to its precipitous decline and effective demise, in which he was an active, Witness Protection Program participant. As his memoir demonstrates, other Mafia members lived for money or violence, but Polisi thrived on sheer excitement; for him, wearing a wire for the Feds provided at least as much adrenaline as pulling heists and running loan shark operations. Thanks to Polisi connections and retentiveness, The Sinatra Club serves as an insider's history of the mob in the golden age of Gotti and beyond.

Publishers Weekly

Polisi's early life was marred by abandonment, abuse, and loss. His greatest joy came from going to the racetrack with his Uncle Tony and listening to stories about famous gangsters-indeed, it was Uncle Tony who introduced him to the Colombo mob family. Polisi's connection to the notorious family would lead him to selling heroin, robbing banks, stealing trucks, and, in 1971, opening an illegal all-hours gambling den dubbed "The Sinatra Club." John Gotti would later become a partner in the business, as well as a friend of the author. Polisi provides fascinating details about some of his crimes as a member of the first "Three-Families hijack crew," which included Gotti's protégée, Ronald "Foxy" Jerothe, and Tommy "Two Guns" DeSimone, the man who inspired Joe Pesci's character in GoodFellas. He also details the murder of Joe Gallo, wars between families, and compelling evidence to suggest JFK's assassination was a mob hit. But in addition to an exhilarating trip though Italian-American mafia history, Polisi's text doubles as a heartfelt memoir, wherein he candidly expounds on the pain of neglecting his family and the devastating losses that eventually impelled him to leave "The Life" behind and testify against his former colleagues.
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From the Publisher

“Brassy….Evocative….An audacious memoir unveiling the machinations of the mob.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Mafia memoirs are well-trod ground, but Polisi’s personal focus will engage readers….like Henry Hill, the famous subject of the genre classic Wiseguy, he has a sort of disreputably-likable quality about him. For fans of inside-organized-crime books, this one’s a definite must-read.” —Booklist

Kirkus Reviews