Ryan Gingeras

Máloktorá sila pretvorila moderný svet tak významne – a tajne – ako mafia. Cosa Nostra, Medellínsky kartel, jakuza či päť newyorských rodín sú notoricky známe, no oficiálne kroniky aj populárne články často opomínajú ich skutočnú úlohu pri formovaní národov, ekonomík a spoločností. Ryan Gingeras vo svojej knihe čerpá z vyše desaťročného výskumu a odhaľuje skrytú históriu podsvetia. Prekračuje storočia i kontinenty a na legendárnych postavách ako Al Capone, Pablo Escobar či Jüe-šeng mapuje vzostup fenoménu gangstra. Kniha skúma tri kľúčové oblasti, v ktorých mafie ovplyvnili moderný svet: posúvanie hraníc zákona, ekonomické aktivity odrážajúce dominanciu západného sveta v globálnom obchode a formovanie populárnej kultúry. Zločinecké syndikáty sa však vyvíjajú ešte aj v 21. storočí, a tak Gingeras poukazuje na alarmujúce stieranie hraníc medzi gangstrami, korporáciami a politickými lídrami. Koniec koncov, len vlády určujú, čo je zločin a kto je zločinec.

Few forces have shaped our world as powerfully – or as secretly – as mafias. Groups such as La Cosa Nostra, the Medellín Cartel, New York’s Five Families, the Japanese yakuza and Russian vory are notorious, endlessly covered in news stories and popular media. Yet when official histories are written, their role in shaping nations, economies and societies is rarely acknowledged. In Mafia: A Global History, Ryan Gingeras draws on more than a decade of research to uncover this suppressed underworld history. Crossing centuries and continents, he introduces legendary figures – Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, Du Yuesheng – and explores the conditions, cultures and locales that gave birth to modern mafias: Sicily, Marseille, New York, Colombia, Tokyo. As he reconstructs the rise of a gang or the life of a gangster, he also charts the expanding power of states and the increasingly international reach of trade, crime and law enforcement. After all, governments define what is a crime and who is a criminal, and their agents create the strategies used to limit or defend against their threat. Beginning with bandits and ending with today’s ‘mafia states’ – and the alarming blurring of lines between gangsters, corporations and political leaders – this sweeping narrative traces the evolution of organised crime in response to industrialisation, globalisation and technological change. By charting the origins, consolidation and transformation of mafias, Gingeras reveals not only where contemporary gangsters come from, but how they became central to our imagination and why they are the uncredited architects of the modern world.

The Ottoman Empire had been one of the major facts in European history since the Middle Ages. Stretching from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, the Empire was both a great political entity and a religious one, with the Sultan ruling over the Holy Sites and, as Caliph, the successor to Mohammed. Yet the Empire's fateful decision to support Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 doomed it to disaster, breaking it up into a series of European colonies and what emerged as an independent Saudi Arabia. Ryan Gingeras's superb new book explains how these epochal events came about and shows how much we still live in the shadow of decisions taken so long ago. Would all of the Empire fall to marauding Allied armies, or could something be saved? In such an ethnically and religiously entangled region, what would be the price paid to create a cohesive and independent new state? The story of the creation of modern Turkey is an extraordinary, bitter epic, brilliantly told here.