The Illustrated History of Organized Crime is a hardcover collection of the articles that National Book Award-nominated journalist (for The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley) Richard Hammer wrote for Playboy in their August 1973 through July 1974 issues; the fact that the book wasn't published until 1989, and that the articles weren't updated and weren't so much as explained by an introduction or afterword, makes this collection mildly off-putting: the concluding article saw print while Richard M. Nixon was still in the White House, Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa was still very much alive, and the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) was a little understood and under-utilized law (it was passed in 1970) so new that it doesn't merit a mention, even in passing, anywhere in Hammer's articles.

Aside from that, TIHoOC is an engaging overview of organized crime -- read Italian-dominated organized crime, with Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz given significant cameo roles and Irish gangs as such disappearing into the margins as Hammer's account begins -- in the U.S. from the 1890s until 1974. As the title promises, it is profusely illustrated (notwithstanding the photo credits page, none of the illustrations in this volume are in color), with enough photos of dead mobsters (yes, yes, including one of Bugsy Siegel, apparently taken after his corpse was removed from the couch of his rented Beverly Hills mansion) to satisfy all but the most vicious of gore-crows. Hammer focuses principally on the Mob's activities in New York City; while other cities do receive varying degrees of attention (to my pleased surprise, Detroit merits one of the bigger digressions), Los Angeles is scarcely mentioned at all: Mickey Cohen, perhaps L.A.'s most famous criminal overlord in the 1940s and 1950s (as seen in the novels of James Ellroy), is mentioned only once, and is not included in the index.

If Hammer doesn't offer the historical and cultural insights of Robert Lacey's Little Big Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life or the wealth of entertaining (if questionable) anecdotes of Gus Russo's The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America, he provides ample suggestions as to where these later books could turn their attentions.

Indeed, in a sense Hammer's account benefits by having been written before the Watergate drama had played itself out: such up-to-the-minute reporting makes parts of the concluding chapter especially pithy, almost poignant, as witness the remarks of Ralph Salerno, a former NYC detective and Mafia investigator: "'Organized crime will put a man in the White House someday and he won't even know it until they hand him the bill'" (p. 350). Hammer's conclusion -- capped by a photo of our Criminal in Chief waving away accusations of his illegal activities -- reads, in part, "Perhaps the one necessary ingredient in any successful campaign against the underworld is the existence of a moral climate that will no longer tolerate corruption. But the moral tone of a society is set by its leaders, in politics, business, and labor. The corporate society today is ruled by men like those at ITT or the oil companies who see nothing wrong in fomenting revolutions against foreign governments of which they disapprove, who think it good business to buy and sell politicians like used stock cars" (p. 356). That the White House is at this writing occupied by men who see nothing wrong with an imperial presidency (to say nothing of an imperial vice presidency), who are hell-bent on scrapping or rewriting the Constitution to suit their own ends, who see no need for allied states as they bestride the world stage and one of whom, at least, apparently believes that he was directly appointed by God Himself to immanentize the Eschaton, makes Hammer's articles all the more timely. In such a climate, organized crime can prosper very well indeed. ( )