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Whistle Stopper - McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Borzoi Books)
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List Price: $27.95
Our Price: $16.85
Your Save: $ 11.10 ( 40% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Knopf
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.106
EAN: 9781400044115
ISBN: 1400044111
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2008-04-08
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2008-04-08
Studio: Knopf
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great book on global criminal enterprises
Comment: This is a global journey through organized crime. The first thing I thought of when I read this book was "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. This book succeeds in every regard where Friedman's book fails. Glenny shows how criminal organizations take advantage of corrupt and inefficient systems to create smooth enterprise. Crime all over the globe is profiled, from Russia to India. Rather than reading like an encyclopedia, Glenny's anecdotes show the insidious nature of global criminals and the large part they play in the world's economy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Anecdotal Information
Comment: Very good read with tons of information but just could not shake the feeling like the book was more a collection of stories told that relied too much on primary sources to recount what they knew than any overarching investigative effort. The stories in their singularity are true, especially those about Eastern Europe, but I am not so sure they fit as part of a bigger puzzle; the author sounds too much like a Friedman on some issues and a union leader on others. The good is that book is definitely eye opening and a must read to get an idea of the criminal world.
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Summary: quality reporting
Comment: Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Glenny's book is how well he traces the births of organized crime groups, what enables them and why they do what they do. This book isn't a comprehensive manual of all organized crime in the world for Interpol use as some may expect, but a tour through environments that spawn criminal groups. After describing the scams, crimes, how they're executed and how the criminals make a profit, he traces the groups' origins, analyzes their social environment, why their service is in demand and what keeps them in business (no real rule of law, people want to buy their wares/services no matter what, etc.). If you wan to know where and why organized crime gets its steam and its profits, this is definitely a book for your reading list.
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Summary: engaging book
Comment: This is a very engaging book, so well written that it seems like fiction - but sadly its not. Are you perplexed by the glitzy storefronts and countless luxury cars on the city streets of Kiev and Moscow? Are you curious about how guns get into the hands of warlords in Africa or where the demand for slave labor could possible come from? Do you wonder how the fall of the Soviet Union really played out? This is a riveting account of our alter world - the one thriving and evolving in the shadows of mainstream economies and governments - and how all of the nefarious activites around the globe tie together and relate to each other. It does get a bit repetitive towards the end of the book, but you still feel the urge to read on and finish. I strongly recommend it.
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Summary: Global Disorder
Comment: Glenny dutifully documents, in exquisite detail, the rise of transnational criminal organizations in every global region.
Simple formula: morally neutral global economic platform + economic/social distress = the rapid proliferation and unabated growth of transnational criminal organizations.
Without a fundamental revision of global governance (not very likely), we will soon become very familiar with local variants of the stories he documents.
John Robb, author of: Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization
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Editorial Reviews:
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Amazon Significant Seven, April 2008: In McMafia, Misha Glenny draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman's bright flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it's also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth's economy, trading in everything from untaxed cigarettes and the usual narcotics to human lives and nuclear material. Glenny's a Balkans expert, and he begins his story there, with the illicit--but often state-sponsored--underworld that grew out of the post-Soviet chaos, but he soon follows the contraband everywhere from Mumbai and Johannesburg to rural Colombia and the U.S. suburbs. It's not just a hodgepodge of scare clips, though: Glenny reports from the ground but follows the leads as high as they go, showing how the dark and bright sides of the flat world are more connected than we imagine. --Tom Nissley
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