Here And There 1 April, 2021 Russell Shorto

Back in the 1950s America’s big cities all had big-time organized crime gangs.  In Pennsylvania, that mean the big mob towns were Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  But they had their small-town subsidiaries, like the one author Russell Shorto’s grandfather helped run in Johnstown. His book Smalltime is both a mob investigation and a family memoir…and a heckuva read. Part of what Russell and his father uncovered was his Dad’s longstanding lie about why he didn’t follow his father into the Mafia family.