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Title: Red Mafiya by Robert Friedman ISBN: 0-425-18687-3 Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.28 (39 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: I returned it
Comment: I waited for this book with great anticipation. Ever since reading Handelman's "Comrade Criminal," I have been interested in the Russian mafiya.
But I think Handelman's book spoiled this one for me. "Comrade Criminal" focused on the organized crime situation in Russia. However, it had some fairly interesting tidbits about the expansion of the mobs into the United States and other countries.
Friedman's book was a little too breathless and exaggerated for me. For example, there was his claim that the Genovese Crime Family was earning billions of dollars. That seems a bit much. I could believe it of the Cali Drug Cartel certainly, but not an association of thugs that the FBI has decimated in the last twenty years.
I also found myself losing confidence in the author for another exaggeration. According to one expert drawn on by PBS's Frontline program about the mafiya, Vyacheslav Ivankov, the Russian gangster who sent the nasty Valentine's Day card to the author, may have been a big fish, but he probably was not "the Red Godfather" of America.
A final irritant was Friedman's getting the name of the DEA wrong. It's the "Drug Enforcement Administration" not "Drug Enforcement Agency." It's a small mistake, but it does make you wonder how closely the book was fact-checked (and how much the author really spent around DEA agents who would have certainly set him straight).
So I'd recommend that readers get "Comrade Criminal" and not this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Insightful and Alarming
Comment: Telling the tale of the growth of the Russian mafia in America from its inception to its current staggering state, Friedman presents a book here that is worth every bit of the price it may cost.
Few titles I have seen make as clear the true magnitude of this situation in America, and it really is a problem that has not been fully understood. Though the book focuses more on the history of the mob's rise than the current state of affairs, this is important to know for the hope of catching up on nearly two decades of American law enforcement neglect.
Once the message of this book is understood, you'll find it difficult to not be at least a little alarmed and certainly angered at the ease with which the red mob grew in America.
Especially interesting is the discussion of the mob's connection to Russian NHL players, and upon finding out about NHL attitudes towards the situation the real alarm may set in.
I would indeed recommend this book highly to the lay reader with an interest in crime topics, though it probably does lack the depth that criminal justice professionals would look for in an analysis. But of course an analysis like that isn't its intent, but rather it hopes to open up our eyes, and trust me, that it will do.
Rating: 1
Summary: Antisemitic and Russophobic Thrash by a self-hating Jew
Comment: Robert I. Friedman (who recently died) was a terrorist loving, antisemitic and russophobic thrash peddler. His books are full of obscene innuendo and downright libel. He never backs up his sources and engages in Jew-bating (his previous books) and Russophobic rants (Red Mafiya). As a Jew from the Soviet Union and a proud Zionist, I consider Friedman to be as antisemitic and dangerous to the Jewish community as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan.
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