Octopus: The Long Reach of the International Sicilian Mafia

This is an amazing book that was recommended to me by my college professor. I have been intersted in mafia for a long time now and have read quite a bit about the La Cosa Nostra. This book is very well written and well researched. It is detailed and very intersting.Claire Sterling writes about the Sicilian and the American Mafia their ties to one another and the involvement they had with the international drug trade. There are many characters in this book I have not heard of before and was glad to gain a much better understanding of the mafias involvement with drugs.

This book should be regarded as a "textbook" of the rise of the American Mafia. Ms. Sterling has done an exhaustive research of the origins of the American Mafia from its roots in Sicily to its role in present day. The most memorable discovery in the book was the control the Sicilian Mafia had over its American "version". All in all, an extremely informative study of organized crime on an international scale.