In an ideal world, every writer, whether academic, professional or popular, should consult David Critchley's book before repeating assertions about the history of organized crime in New York in particular and the United States as a whole. His research shows conclusively the early twentieth-century Mafia groups were localized and diffuse in their processes and structure, and that ties to Mafia groups in other parts of the country were loosely defined and operationally devolved. Despite countless claims to the contrary, the Mafia was not centrally organized, did not become rich and powerful during Prohibition, and did not control or come to control organized crime in New York, let alone America.

Critchley's early chapters contextualize early American Mafia history by outlining the immigration backdrop. He makes clear that while there was an interchange of members between American and Sicilian Mafia families there was no grand plan for Sicilian “men of honour” to export their brand of organized crime to the United States. His research challenges many received wisdoms on organized crime. Donald Cressey's influential Theft of a Nation (1969), for example, made the claim that the Castellammare War between gangsters associated either with Salvatore Maranzano or with Joseph Masseria “determined the present order of things,” i.e. “the Italian-Sicilian domination of ‘American illicit syndicates and the confederation integrating them’” (14). Countless true-crime writers have made similar assertions about the pivotal importance of the war, beginning with Hickman Powell's claim in 90 Times Guilty (1940): “Where once there had been small and isolated neighbourhood gangs, now the major interests of the underworld were really all one mob” (80). Critchley has written the most thoroughly documented account of a conflict that consisted of around a dozen shooting deaths in New York and possibly three more in Detroit and did not change the internal organization of the New York families let alone the structure of organized crime in America.

Critchley completes his analysis by dismissing the alleged “Americanization of the Mafia” brought about by Charles “Lucky” Luciano as an “empirically unsupported myth” (233). Many writers claimed that Luciano orchestrated a nationwide purge of old-style Mafia leaders (so-called “Moustache Petes”) and established a more orderly, businesslike, and Americanized underworld government. As the journalist Fred Cook expressed it in Mafia! (1973), Luciano's “conduct of affairs would have horrified the old Moustache Petes, so completely did it break with the clannishness and exclusivity of Sicilian traditions; for Luciano and the new national commission of crime under his aegis dealt impartially with racketeers of various ethnic backgrounds” (89). Critchley simply demolishes such bunkum by showing that the alleged nationwide purge did not happen and that traditionalist bosses remained leaders of their New York families until the 1960s.

Above all, the depth of research in The Origin of Organized Crime in America captures the diversity and modesty of scale and outcomes that characterized New York City's Mafia in its formative years. It should hopefully give honest scholars pause before making glib assumptions about the history of organized crime. However, it is unlikely to prevent governments and media outlets continuing to resort to the many simplifications and stereotypes that underlie the term “organized crime” and the more recent “global security threat” of transnational organized crime.