The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia

This was a fascinating and exciting story.The characters were real people who took me inside of their club to see where the action was. I thought this book might be about the mafia that J.Carol Johnson told of in The Lonely Life of a Pornographer's Wife. I though her mafia men were brutal until I read what Sal Polisi had to say. His mafia was the real deal--the actual big bad guys and wise guys from the Gambini, Columbo and Gottti Families! I remember hearing about those men in the news, on TV and in the movies, But Polisi was right there in the middle of everything and let the readers know what actually happened. This was an exciting book and I'm sure I'll be reading again some day.

As some of the reviewers say, the book got way too repetitive, and about the wrong things. We really didnt need to have 20% of the book be about this guys voracious sexual appetite which if 2/3 of it is true, he needed to be a porn star or have himself checked out for a very, very over-active prostate gland. -). That said, I bet money that while some of these things you heard before, there are definitely stories you did not here before! EG-Did you know that Tommy Desimone came within a hair of blowing away John Gotti? Did you also know that John had him killed years later for a different beef? And the stuff Sal lays out about the JFK assassination clearly being a mob hit is worth the price alone. No he cant offer any proof, but the things we know about the old bosses at that time, it all makes sense.Great stuff we never knew about Hoffa too. What I always wanted to know and this book finally answered is how much did the guys from the movies Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco and the movie Gotti know each other as the movies spanned 3 decades and different families. Sal shows us... a lot more than we thought! Now...did Sal leave out a lot of really bad things he did to get where he got and earn all this respect? Id say yes. He makes it seem like he is almost a nice guy but I do not buy it. I think that Steve Dougherty helped clean up a lot of things that would have turned us all off. But as far as a page turner...if you have a whole weekend off and its raining outside...this book could keep you busy. And Steve , you write with the easy reading style and clarity of a Pileggi, a Breslin or Gay Talese. I just want to know the biggest question, how could Sal have written this book and still be alive? He has to be one shrewd guy, this Polisi. I think it is because he had the class to not talk bad about any of the people in the book to anger their families. Both of them. Book is 384 pages and I read it in 3 days! Would give 5 stars if he didn't fill 20% of the book or more with his sex life and chasing women. Here's the summary:He was a good looking guy and a chick magnet to begin with, could spend money on anything a woman wanted, was lucky enough to almost never get caught stealing, and decided since tomorrow may never come, he decided to screw himself to death. The End! We should all be so lucky. -)

"We were at a joint called the Fireplace in Ozone Park, Queens, when I first heard Johnny Boy's name. It was the summer of 1968, not long after Bobby Kennedy got whacked. I knew better than to ask my boss, Dominic, who I was with that night and who was a hit man himself, about Bobby, but I assumed it was a Mob job like his brother."YES! I will be reading more of "The Sinatra Club." by Sal Pilosi with Steve Dougherty. With an opening sentence like that, how could I not?The book goes on to be a thoroughly engrossing and entertaining read. Kudous Mr. Dougherty and Mr. Polisi for giving us a fresh, provocative and uncensored account of some really scary people and times. It seems the mob can frighten even itself.At first this highly entertaining, hyper-paced memoir, of mid-level mobster `Crazy Sal" Polisi, feels as if you stumbled on the diary of a sociopath. Names, dates, times, and places--nothing is left to the imagination in this tale of high times and low-life's. The casual violence alone, in this warts, scars-and-all memoir, gives you the uneasy feeling that you've stumbled on something you have no business reading.Historic events, from the significant (the Kennedy assassination and the Apollo moon landing) to the mundane (Disney World's inaugural opening) are noted alongside bank robberies, drug deals and murders and help place the reader in each grizzly moment. (The Beatles, no less, play an unwitting role in the mobsters' skullduggery.)Evil does not survive in a vacuum and the frustrating part of The Sinatra Club is how often those entrusted with public safety, from the cop on the corner to judges and J. Edger Hoover himself, either turn a blind eye or profit from mob crimes.No one is let off the hook in The Sinatra Club, mainly Polisi himself. He is un-flinchingly adamant that he lived `the Life' and (for a while, anyway) loved it; until the introduction of the disease that proved lethal for people in his line of work--a creeping conscience.

Awesome book covering a great era in Mob history. Sally Ubatz gives it to you straight from beginning to end. There were stories and facts I never knew. You won't be disappointed.

Having watched the terrible movie for this book I was a little dubious as to whether or not it would be any good. However, I took a risk based on the other encouraging reviews. The book is quite long and very detailed and also very humorous in places. I was gripped immediately from start to finish and struggled to put it down. Polisi was never a made man, but he was right in the thick of all of the most infamous characters of the period in New York's mob. From Gotti, Henry Hill, Don Carlo Gambino, Tommy DeSimone, Jimmy Burke, Aniello Delacroce, Angelo Ruggiero, etc, etc. The list is endless and they have all (including Polisi) been potrayed in film. Well worth a read if you have the remotest interest in real crime of the New York mob.

A great nook for the real Frank fan. Some stuff is not read anywhere else due to the very close relationship at the books heart. Barbara Sinatra doesn’t come out of it well. But others do. Including Frank.

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Got this book 2 weeks ago and read it in 3 days it is a decent book on the New York mafia and john gotti and other mafia who where about in the 1970s - present day