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Audiobook (abridged)9 hours
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld
Written by Misha Glenny
Narrated by John Lee
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets. No one would foresee that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the globalization of organized crime.
McMafia is a fearless, encompassing, wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West.
To trace the disparate strands of this hydra-like story, Glenny talked to police, victims, politicians, and members of the global underworld in eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. The story of organized crime's phenomenal, often shocking growth is truly the central political story of our time. McMafia will change the way we look at the world.
McMafia is a fearless, encompassing, wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West.
To trace the disparate strands of this hydra-like story, Glenny talked to police, victims, politicians, and members of the global underworld in eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. The story of organized crime's phenomenal, often shocking growth is truly the central political story of our time. McMafia will change the way we look at the world.
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Reviews for McMafia
Rating: 3.9020266891891895 out of 5 stars
4/5
148 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book indeed!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I couldn't put this book down. Absolutely riveting account of the development of the Eastern European mafia after the fall of Communism. V. interesting about the drug trade in the Americas too.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fast-paced tour through the new global criminal underworld that's as informative as it is entertaining. Glenny has done both his research and his footwork, and much of the research that went in to this book seems to have been conducted first-hand. At it's best, this book reads like an adventurous travelogue of some of the world's most dangerous places. Those who enjoy reading about organized crime for its patina of dangerous, moneyed cool will find some interesting stuff here: Glenny provides some juicy details about the fast, dangerous lives of Russian mobsters and describes the surprisingly prosaic business dealings of Japan's semi-legal "yakuza" organizations, which bear only the faintest resemblance to the gangsters you've seen in Scorsese films. His real subject, though, is globalization, and he builds a convincing case that large-scale, transnational organized crime is the global economy's inevitable downside. The mob's real objective, he argues, is not violence or power but money, and they get it by providing goods and services that the world's governments have decided to outlaw or by filling the gaps left by corrupt, inefficient states. Glenny's prose doesn't always do his arguments justice; he sometimes opts for pulpy expressions of outrage when a simple description is all that's called for. At other times, he seems a bit too sunny about his subject. Though it's hard not to admire the creativity and initiative of some of the mobsters that he describes, his contention that some organized crime syndicates can become sources of social stability probably won't convince too many readers. Still, the criminal empires described in "McMafia" are so enormous, wealthy, and far-reaching that, by the book's end, one is almost ready to concede that corruption and organized crime are an inextricable features of human existence. If they are, this would make Glenny a worthwhile chronicler of our mobbed-up planet.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Glenny is no prose stylist, but, as with his best work on the Balkans, this book is compulsively readable and plenty scary.