The Best Organized True Crime Books 2025

1. The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes from My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run, (Paperback)

Now, in his inimitable style, Henry Hill tells some spicy stories of his life in the Mob and shows you how to whip up his favorite dishes, Sicilian style--even when you're cooking on the run. Learn delicious recipes that make even the toughest tough guy beg for more... Henry Hill was a born wiseguy. At the pizzeria where he worked as a kid, he learned to substitute pork for veal in cutlets--which came in handy later when the bankroll was low. At thirteen, he got his first percentage from a local deli--that lost business when he started supplying the neighborhood wiseguys with his own heroes. And what great heroes they were. Once he entered Witness Protection, though, Hill found himself in places where prosciutto was impossible to get and gravy was something you put on mashed potatoes. So he learned to fake it when necessary (for example, Romano with white pepper took the place of real pecorino-siciliano cheese), and wherever he found himself, Hill managed to keep good Italian food on the table. He still brings this flair for improvisation to his cooking. No recipe is set in stone. And substitutions are listed in case you need them for these recipes and many more: Mom's Antipasto - Sunday Gravy (Meat Sauce) - Cheater's Chicken Stock - Striped Bass for Paulie - Fat Larry's Pizza Dough - Henry's Kickback Antipasti Hero - Sicilian Easter Bread with Colored Eggs - Clams Casino - Osso Buco - Oven Penitentiary Sauce with Sausage - Michael's Favorite Ziti with Meat Sauce

The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes from My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run, (Paperback) Author: Berkley Books ISBN: 9780451207067 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2002-10-01 Page Count: 352

2. Do or Die, (Paperback)

"The most vivid and insightful investigation any reporter has made into gang life. This is the human face behind the tragic headlines, a sad, honestly reported story of kids at war with themselves".-- "Playboy" "Shocking". "--San Francisco Chronicle" "Poignant". "--New York Times" "Fascinating and frightening". "--Los Angeles Times" "Ambitious and provocative". "--Chicago Tribune" "The testimonies Bing elicits are always fascinating [as she] lets gang members speak for themselves and at length, weaving together their stories with scene-setting narrative that reveals her deep caring for these violent youths". "--Houston Chronicle"

Do or Die, (Paperback) Author: Harper Perennial ISBN: 9780060922917 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1992-05-20 Page Count: 304

3. Blue Helmets and Black Markets, (Hardcover)

The 1992-1995 battle for Sarajevo was the longest siege in modern history. It was also the most internationalized, attracting a vast contingent of aid workers, UN soldiers, journalists, smugglers, and embargo-busters. The city took center stage under an intense global media spotlight, becoming the most visible face of post-Cold War conflict and humanitarian intervention. However, some critical activities took place backstage, away from the cameras, including extensive clandestine trading across the siege lines, theft and diversion of aid, and complicity in the black market by peacekeeping forces. In Blue Helmets and Black Markets, Peter Andreas traces the interaction between these formal front-stage and informal backstage activities, arguing that this created and sustained a criminalized war economy and prolonged the conflict in a manner that served various interests on all sides. Although the vast majority of Sarajevans struggled for daily survival and lived in a state of terror, the siege was highly rewarding for some key local and international players. This situation also left a powerful legacy for postwar reconstruction: new elites emerged via war profiteering and an illicit economy flourished partly based on the smuggling networks built up during wartime. Andreas shows how and why the internationalization of the siege changed the repertoires of siege-craft and siege defenses and altered the strategic calculations of both the besiegers and the besieged. The Sarajevo experience dramatically illustrates that just as changes in weapons technologies transformed siege warfare through the ages, so too has the arrival of CNN, NGOs, satellite phones, UN peacekeepers, and aid convoys. Drawing on interviews, reportage, diaries, memoirs, and other sources, Andreas documents the business of survival in wartime Sarajevo and the limits, contradictions, and unintended consequences of international intervention. Concluding with a comparison of the battle for Sarajevo with the sieges of Leningrad, Grozny, and Srebrenica, and, more recently, Falluja, Blue Helmets and Black Markets is a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary urban warfare, war economies, and the political repercussions of humanitarian action.

Blue Helmets and Black Markets, (Hardcover) Author: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801443558 Format: Hardcover Publication Date: 2008-08-07 Page Count: 224

4. Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy, (Paperback)

Don Henry Ford, Jr., is an unapologetic outlaw. For seven years he made his living smuggling marijuana across the U.S.-Mexico border in the Big Bend region of Texas. His business partners were some of the era's biggest narcotraficantes like Pablo Acosta and Amado Carrillo Fuentes. After Ford was arrested and imprisoned, he escaped and lived for a year in rural Mexico, raising a bumper crop of weed and hiding out from the federales, before his recapture and return to the penitentiary. Contrabando is the extraordinary, unabashed memoir of a rebel -- a warrior on the other side of the War on Drugs who lived to tell the tale. But more than a riveting and remarkable true crime confession, Contrabando is an ode to the beauty of the dry, dusty West Texas plains and the lonely hills of Mexico -- and a tribute to Ford's friends, protectors, and fellow outlaws who stood by him during the dangerous smuggling years.

Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy, (Paperback) Author: Harper Perennial ISBN: 9780060883102 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2015-12-29 Page Count: 240

5. Born to Kill: The Rise and Fall of America's Bloodiest Asian Gang, (Paperback)

Throughout the late eighties and nineties, a gang of young Asian refugees cut a bloody swath through New York's Chinatown. They were the lost children of the Vietnam War, severed from their families by violence and cast adrift in a strange land. Banding together under the leadership of a megalomaniacal young psychopath, David Thai, they took their name from a slogan they had seen on helicopters and the helmets of U.S. soldiers: \"Born to Kill.\" For a decade their empire was unassailable, built on a foundation of fear, ruthlessness, and unimaginable brutality--until one courageous gang brother helped bring it down from the inside.

Born to Kill: The Rise and Fall of America's Bloodiest Asian Gang, (Paperback) Author: William Morrow & Company ISBN: 9780061782381 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2009-06-09 Page Count: 310

6. The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, (Paperback)

Philip Carlo's The Ice Man spent over six weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Top Mob Hitman. Devoted Family Man. Doting Father. For thirty years, Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski led a shocking double life, becoming the most notorious professional assassin in American history while happily hosting neighborhood barbecues in suburban New Jersey. Richard Kuklinski was Sammy the Bull Gravano's partner in the killing of Paul Castellano, then head of the Gambino crime family, at Sparks Steakhouse. Mob boss John Gotti hired him to torture and kill the neighbor who accidentally ran over his child. For an additional price, Kuklinski would make his victims suffer; he conducted this sadistic business with coldhearted intensity and shocking efficiency, never disappointing his customers. By his own estimate, he killed over two hundred men, taking enormous pride in his variety and ferocity of technique. This trail of murder lasted over thirty years and took Kuklinski all over America and to the far corners of the earth, Brazil, Africa, and Europe. Along the way, he married, had three children, and put them through Catholic school. His daughter's medical condition meant regular stays in children's hospitals, where Kuklinski was remembered, not as a gangster, but as an affectionate father, extremely kind to children. Each Christmas found the Kuklinski home festooned in colorful lights; each summer was a succession of block parties. His family never suspected a thing. Richard Kuklinski is now the subject of the major motion picture titled "The Iceman"(2013), starring James Franco, Winona Ryder, Ray Liotta, and Chris Evans.

The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, (Paperback) Author: St. Martin's Griffin ISBN: 9780312374655 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2007-09-18 Page Count: 440

7. Honor Thy Father, (Paperback)

The acclaimed author of Unto the Sons penetrates the silence and secrecy of the Mafia and offers an intimate look at a powerful--and vanishing--way of life. "An invaluable document".--The New York Times Book Review.

Honor Thy Father, (Paperback) Author: Ecco Press ISBN: 9780061665363 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2009-04-14 Page Count: 592

8. Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the American Mafia, (Paperback)

"American Mafia . . . was lucid, concise, and devoid of sensationalism . . . This equally well-written sequel [is] cogent [and] coherent."--The New York Times Book Review In his critically acclaimed American Mafia, Thomas Reppetto revealed the details of organized crime's ascendancy in America. His fascinating sequel follows the mob after its peak during Prohibition and the mayhem that followed. Drawing on a lifetime of field experience, he tells the stories of the Mafia's twentieth-century bosses, showing how men such as Sam Giancana, "Crazy Joe" Gallo, and John Gotti became household names. By 1960 crusaders such as Robert Morgenthau, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, Robert Kennedy, and scores of ordinary cops and U.S. marshals began to gain the upper hand in what became a war against organized crime. In vivid, fast-paced prose, Bringing Down the Mob reads like a dramatic fifty-year military campaign. Reppetto concludes his lively history with evidence for a provocative theory that, given the right formula of global connections and shrewd business decisions, a new generation of multinational criminals appears poised to take up the Mafia mantle.

Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the American Mafia, (Paperback) Author: Holt Paperbacks ISBN: 9780805086591 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2007-09-04 Page Count: 352

9. A License to Steal : A Father's Genius, a Son's Revenge, but Payback Has a Price (Hardcover) 9780978605902

ISBN: 9780978605902 ISBN10: 097860590X Contributors: Robinson, Mary Jane, Shaw, Walter T., Jr.,

Walter T. Shaw's Autobiography - As early as the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Walter L. Shaw was thinking of speaker phones, conference calls and call forwarding. Of the thirty-nine patents to his credit, those three telephonic breakthroughs were his biggest inventions, yet nobody knows his name. Ahead of the world by decades, Shaw was leading us into a high-tech future as part of the intellectual elite, but he was repeatedly cheated by shrewd businessmen and big corporations. His son, Walter T. Shaw, was enraged by the ill treatment of his father and embraced a personal mission to even the score. Shaw Jr. would become one of the most prolific jewel thieves . history. Shaw Sr. spent a lifetime inventing and patenting the many means of communication we take for granted today, but it was all for nothing.Tragically, only the Mafia rewarded him. Just to make ends meet for his family, he was persuaded to put his brilliance to work for the mob.

10. Befriend and Betray : Infiltrating the Hells Angels, Bandidos and Other Criminal Brotherhoods (Hardcover) 9780312537197

ISBN: 9780312537197 ISBN10: 0312537190 Contributors: Caine, Alex,

The Hells Angels. The Bandidos. Asian triads. Russian mobsters and corrupt cops. Even the KKK. Just part of a day’s work for Alex Caine, an undercover agent who has seen it all. ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ Alex Caine started life as a working-class boy who always thought he’d end up in a blue-collar job. But after a tour in Vietnam and a stretch in prison on marijuana-possession charges, he fell into the cloak-and-dagger world of a contracted agent or “kite” infiltrating criminal groups that cops across North America and around the globe were unable to penetrate themselves. ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ Thanks to his quick-wittedness and his tough but unthreatening demeanor, Caine could fit into whatever unsavory situation he found himself. Over twenty-five years, his assignments ran the gamut from bad-ass bikers to triad toughs. When a job was over, he’d slip away to a new part of the continent or world, where he would assume a new identity and then go back to work on another group of bad guys. ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ Told with page-turning immediacy, "Befriend and Betray" gives a candid look behind the scenes at some familiar police operations and blows the lid off others that law enforcement would much prefer to keep hidden. And it offers an unvarnished account of the toll such a life takes, one that often left Caine to wonder who he really was, behind those decades of assumed identities. Or whether justice was ever truly served.