Material presented on The American Mafia history website (http://mafiahistory.us and http://www.onewal.com/) was gathered through decades of research into the history of American organized crime. A childhood interest in the subject blossomed into a full-time obsession in the late 1990s, when I began organizing collected newspaper clippings, notebook pages and index cards. That effort gave rise to this website in September 2002. The website is more of a process than it is a document. Very often new historical data becomes available and causes old assumptions to be revised or abandoned. Over the past few years, many underworld legends appearing on these pages have given way to more defensible statements. And other revisions are sure to be made in the months and years ahead. It is a pleasure to be able to share my interest with you. I welcome your emailed comments, questions, criticisms. I hope that the site is useful to you and that you check in from time to time to see what is new. Copyright © 2011, Thomas Hunt. All rights reserved.




Sunday, February 24, 2013

Today in History

I've been tinkering a little with the Today in History box on the main entrance of the website. (So, if it starts to screw up, that's the reason.) In case you're wondering, the information in that box is generated by a JavaScript program that checks the current date and finds relevant historic news data and prints it onto the screen. I have reformatted the box to display information in neat columns, and I have added the ability to find and display a photograph related to the historic news items (and a small caption). I hope that makes the Today in History box just a bit more interesting.

Today in History box.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Bibliography update

The Bibliography listing on the website has been updated. Reach that page by heading to mafiahistory.us , positioning your cursor over Sources and clicking on Bibliography in the drop-down menu. The Bibliography is comprised of more than 240 titles related (in some way) to the subject of organized crime history.

The purpose of the list is to acquaint visitors with a selection of reading material. The fact that a book is included in the list should not be interpreted as an endorsement by the website of any particular book or author. As in every field of study, published material crosses the spectrum from the scholarly and skeptical through the blandly factual, the journalistic, the superficial and the sensational, all the way to the irresponsible and the deceitful. Researchers are cautioned to consult reviews on the site and other sites before relying on information in any published work. 

Items marked with an asterisk following their publication date may be of particular interest to historians, as they contain the first-person observations of participants in law enforcement, government or the underworld.