Publishers Weekly
04/17/2023
Journalism professor Moses (An Unlikely Union) provides the definitive account of a fascinating chapter in New York City’s law enforcement history with this look at the early 20th-century activities of a special NYPD unit comprising Italian Americans who were charged with stunting the growth of the Mafia. In 1904, Giuseppe Petrosino became the first commander of the Italian Squad, and achieved renown combatting a group of extortionists known as the Black Hand. In 1909, Petrosino travelled to Sicily on a secret mission, but was gunned down in the street. From there, Moses focuses on the victories and vicissitudes of Petrosino’s successors, including Anthony Vachris, who completed Petrosino’s deadly mission in Sicily, and Michael Fiaschetti, who headed the unit until it was disbanded in 1922. Utilizing extensive primary documents, Moses recounts numerous crimes the unit thwarted and details their impact on the public image of Italian Americans without sliding into hero worship. He’s careful to separate fact from fiction, emphasizing that the Black Hand was not “a massive criminal conspiracy rooted in the Old World” but “more of a brand name adopted by disconnected bands of thugs.” That dogged pursuit of truth over salaciousness lends the volume authority, which Moses supplements with brisk pacing. New York history nuts will be in heaven. (June)
Italia Report USA
"Historian Moses carefully strips away the mythology that has always shrouded the Italian squad and instead offers a nuanced portrait of brave, but flawed men who fought the good fight for their people and their city."
Wall Street Journal
"In his new book, reporter-historian Paul Moses writes about the NYPD officers who fought the extortion racket known as the Black Hand during the early part of the 20th century—and did so from a position of ethnic familiarity. Immigrants fighting immigrants, Italians battling Italians, crime fighters operating from within the community that was being preyed upon."
Gang Land - Jerry Capeci
"For Gang Land's money, this book should be required reading for law enforcement, a reminder of how powerful organized crime can grow when it's ignored."
Maria Laurino
"In this absorbing tale of a New York City plagued by bombings, blackmail, and child kidnappings, the unsung heroes of The Italian Squad battle ruthless Black Hand thugs as well as fierce Italian-American prejudice. Moses skillfully tells the little known story of how a group of undercover cops risked their lives to help a vulnerable Italian immigrant population grow and thrive."
New York Daily News
"A story of ethnic stereotypes, immigration battles, and police brutality."
Peter Quinn
"A thoughtful, enlightening, deeply researched exploration of the origins of organized crime in the United States. Moses brings to light the real-life origins of the Mafia and the attempts of Italian-American members of the NYPD to bring it to heel. The issues of ethnicity and criminality that Moses addresses are as timely today as they were a century ago. The Italian Squad is an engrossing read from first page to last."
Daniel Czitrom
"An original and deeply researched book that challenges many of the myths distorting our understanding of organized crime in the twentieth century. Paul Moses gracefully conjures the gritty world of Italian policemen, the struggles of the immigrant community they served, the complex realities of NYPD politics, and the formation of a transnational underworld stretching from New York to Sicily."
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
"In this explosive story, Moses carefully strips away the mythology that has always enveloped the Italian Squad and offers instead a nuanced portrait of brave but flawed men who fought the good fight for their people and their city."
Helene Stapinski
"Moses shows how the Italian Squad was one of the first examples of community policing. With a reporter’s eye for detail and a writer’s feel for the sweep of history, Moses brings to life not only Petrosino, martyred during an investigation in Italy, but those many men and women who continued his fight for law and order for nearly two decades."
PopMatters
"The Italian Squad is a true-crime story expertly told and, though set in a bygone century, relevant to today’s concerns about immigration, prejudice, and policing."
Matt Birkbeck
"In this impeccably researched book, Paul Moses does a masterful job bringing to life the brave men on the front lines of what was a new era in law enforcement. The Italian Squad is a must read for any student of history and organized crime."
New York Daily News - Jacqueline Cutler
"A story of ethnic stereotypes, immigration battles, and police brutality."
Kirkus Reviews
2023-04-11
History of a little-known unit within the New York Police Department made up of Italians who battled organized crime.
In the early 1900s, many members of the NYPD looked down on Italian immigrants, as journalist Moses documents at several points. However, Joseph Petrosino, the first commander of the Italian squad, analyzed the data and concluded that “97 percent of Italian immigrants were law-abiding and hardworking,” and their presence in criminal statistics was no greater than that of any other ethnic group. Appointed to the post by Theodore Roosevelt, then the commissioner of police for New York, Petrosino went up against the first glimmerings of the Mafia in the city. He was assassinated in Sicily, where he was on the hunt for mobsters, in 1909, succeeded by an Irish department head who expanded the squad and who learned along the way that Petrosino had been killed at the orders of a peripheral criminal the detective had shamed with a public beating. Still, Petrosino was enshrined as “the quintessential police officer and New Yorker.” Michael Fiaschetti, another Italian-born officer, eventually headed the squad, fighting the Black Hand and other criminal organizations while doing plenty of self-promotion, which, all the same, didn’t keep him from being demoted for roughing up a defense attorney. The Italian Squad was, as Moses notes, “mythologized” from the start, but Fiaschetti was a master of “inflating his reputation,” so the facts are not easy to come by. Though the narrative isn’t quite as riveting as a well-rendered crime procedural, the author does a solid job digging through the files to get at them, noting that while the squad ultimately didn’t make much of a dent in controlling organized crime—the Mafia flourished in the 1920s and ’30s—it did serve as “a bridge for an alienated immigrant community” that was all too often reluctant to help the police.
A serviceable, well-researched examination of a little-known corner of the NYPD’s past.
