McMafia, written by Misha Glenny, takes the reader on a journey through the world of organised crime. The book is a real eye opener to the reality that is organised crime in eastern europe and around the world. I was completly suprised to learn that organised crime made up so much of the world GDP (1/5 of the total). The growth seen by organised crime in the years following the collapse of the soviet union is truely astonishing and coninues to keep its momentum. I fealt that Glenny's use of testimony from those connected to these crime organizations helps to paint the picture of the shocking truth of this phenomenon. ~ Bruce Springsteen (The Boss)
Some of those conclusions are pretty hard to fathom.
ReplyDeleteWhat kinds of facts did the author use to substantiate his GDP statistic?
~Vladimir Lenin
This book sounds interesting, especially that it says that organized crime makes up so much of the GDP
ReplyDelete-Harriet Tubman
This sound like a very interesting book because I have never really thought about European organized crime.
ReplyDelete- Aristotle
was the organized crime done by many different crime families or one major family that had most of the control? Did the gangs ever emigrate to the United states?
ReplyDelete-Helen of Troy
Such great comments!!
ReplyDeleteGlenny's book is really good, although when I was reading it, I got that creepy feeling that the world is WAY more complicated than I am prepared to comprehend.
For example, when a former Yugoslav republic was smuggling non-taxed cigarettes into Italy, and Bill Clinton met with its president after the war in Bosnia, Clinton casually mentioned to the other president that he should quit smoking. Later, the Italian government gave the former Yugoslavian region money to cover its revenue from cigarette smuggling, and the smuggling stopped.
Strangely, this book does connect to How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer because one of the gangsters, Arkan, owns a soccer team and his thugs are the hooligans in the stands. Talk about a home field advantage.
-Mrs. McCabe
Oh, and is the GDP number that hard to comprehend? Think of drugs, guns, human trafficking, prostitution, cigarettes, weapons, and identity theft, and you're talking about pretty substantial numbers.
ReplyDeleteNo?
Mrs. McCabe