≡ Read Gratis The Don How to Run a Mafia Family eBook William Wingate

The Don How to Run a Mafia Family eBook William Wingate

Download As PDF : The Don How to Run a Mafia Family eBook William Wingate

How and why did I write The Don, How to Run a Mafia Family?

I got the idea while I was researching secret societies for a series of novels I was then writing. Among these ‘societies’ were the KGB, CIA, Mossad—and the Mafia.

After my novels were done, I reread Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince—and confirmed a rather obvious theory that did not require any genius the best Mafia bosses were natural Machiavellians who by instinct ran their Families as The Prince would govern his principality.

Some say The Prince is one of the most influential books ever written. And clearly nothing will replace it, either in style or content, either now or ever. Not even, of course, my very own The Don.

But, also, nobody can deny The Prince was written for the sixteenth-century...

Four hundred years on, many of Machiavelli’s illustrations, appealing as they may have been in his own day, are sometimes not easy to connect with or to appreciate—even among well-read readers. Who, after all, is Cesare Borgia (1475–1507), or Pope Alexander VI? But I think we’ve all heard of Al Capone... And Lucky Luciano too.

Machiavelli’s examples are rather obscure and yesterday’s—mine are today’s and easy to know.

So ... The Don is much easier to follow and relate to than The Prince.

The people in Machiavelli’s anecdotes are, in my view, also much too different to give The Prince a unity and consistency that might have made the book even easier to read and grasp. But then, the twentieth century Mafia in the United States was not around in his time to make things easier and more understandable for everybody.

As it happens, Machiavelli’s theories and principles of ‘effectual’ government, as stated in The Prince, probably suit the running of a Mafia Family better than anything ever written.

It only proves their value that such principles have been applied instinctively by the best of ruthless, ill-educated outlaws to run some of the most successful criminal gangs ever known.

The Don, then, is The Prince ‘restated’ for today—using examples more in keeping with our times.

None of the theories and principles of How to Run a Mafia Family are my own.

I have stolen them from The Prince.

Any mistakes made along that way are all mine.

For anything else blame Machiavelli, not me—his copyist.

It was said of Frank Costello that ‘he could have run General Motors…’ So The Don is also about the limits of free enterprise as a system. For the Mafia Family pushes free enterprise to its ultimate—beyond restraints of law, beyond constraints of corporate boardrooms.
To Lucky Luciano, Costello and Johnny Torrio—three of La Cosa Nostra’s ‘theorists’—all they were doing was ‘business.’ They took free enterprise to where it was more ‘effectual’ to kill an employee rather than to fire him, where they made more money by breaking promises than by keeping them.
Crime was their business, and they stopped at nothing to make their business pay.

Also ... I discourage anybody wanting to run a Mafia Family from reading this book. The premise is purely ironical, and anything I say in ‘praise’ of villains and villainy and how ‘best’ to go about running a criminal enterprise is sarcastic and sardonic.
Sardonic ... scornful, mocking, derisive, satirical, cutting and mordant.
I come not to praise running a Mafia gang, but to bury the idea. Okay?
So, no, I don’t think Mafia Dons should be awarded Nobel Prizes either for Peace or Economics, nor should they be knighted by the Queen of England or even given Congressional Medals of Honor by the US President. Even if I may sometimes seem awestruck by their jaw dropping ... evil. And even to commend them for ... such genius.