... while the book colorfully summons what Mr. Shorto calls 'the era of zoot suits and Studebakers,' it doesn’t romanticize the mob ... Mr. Shorto is unstinting about his grandfather’s failings: Russ, who died in 1981, is the abiding mystery, or perhaps it’s a void, at the book’s center ... While any look at the mob inevitably dwells in the shadow of such pop-cultural depictions as The Godfather, Goodfellas and The Sopranos, Mr. Shorto leans heavily toward the life-sized. His mobsters are hustlers, but they’re no role models, and their families often bear the burden of their misbehavior. Nonetheless, there’s something charmingly prosaic in Mr. Shorto’s accounts ... Small-town mobs were at least as ubiquitous in Western Pennsylvania as they were everywhere else in the country, Mr. Shorto notes, and his book is a detailed and cogent primer. But what gives Smalltime its emotional power is the author’s relationship with his father, whom he recruits to help with research.
... a beautifully rendered, spellbinding saga about family secrets and taboos ... The journey Shorto takes to trace his grandfather's life is eventful, entertaining and enlightening ... In pursuing recollections of the past and unearthing long-buried family secrets, Shorto and his father reconcile and deepen their own relationship on the way to crafting a thorough, immensely moving and empathetic portrait of Shorto's namesake, and how his Sicilian American immigrant experiences shaped the course of history.
In the end, this is not a mob story. It’s a story of family dynamics. Of love and loss and betrayal. Of Shorto’s hometown. Of his own relationship with his father and his father’s relationship with his father. In other words, it’s a family memoir. Whether Shorto likes it or not. His reluctance — perhaps a mere literary device — is a roadblock. But once Shorto’s on the highway, steering us along with his usual humor and eye for quirky detail, settling an hour from his hometown for easy access, we are with him. All the way, as Sinatra would say.
Do we really need another Mafioso-in-the-family memoir? ... When Al Capone’s purported grandson publishes a memoir, and he has, I think it’s safe to say we’ve reached saturation. Which is why I was surprised how thoroughly I enjoyed Russell Shorto’s Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob ... The author of well-received histories of Amsterdam and New York City, Mr. Shorto has produced something that feels altogether fresh ... Much of the fun in Smalltime is accompanying Mr. Shorto into nursing homes, retirement communities and tumbledown rowhouses as he gently grills these wheezing octogenarians—everyone seems to be on oxygen—about the details of bygone sitdowns and arrests and, yes, that single murder ... The weakest sections of the book crowd toward the end, as Mr. Shorto describes his efforts to suss out his ailing father’s involvement in all this ... I didn’t much mind. Mr. Shorto is a terrific storyteller, especially in his brevity. His sentences are short, crisp and unshowy; few of his words are wasted, a delight these days. Extra details are sunk into footnotes. At 259 pages, Smalltime is a book you can knock back in a couple of flights—that is, if we ever take flights again.
While Shorto is successful at finding out what his grandfather did—as well as the affairs he had, the people he swindled, the drinking problem that tanked his illicit career—he struggles to learn more about just who his grandfather was ... There are long talks with relatives, with men who knew his grandfather from his gangster days, with retired police officers and others, but no one can offer a penetrating look at the man who once was second-in-command of a criminal operation that controlled an entire city ... At times, the flatness of his grandfather’s character dampens the narrative. Why, a reader can justifiably ask, do I care about this person? The answer, unfortunately, is never fully apparent. A history of a gangster in a bygone time promises to be riveting, but there’s not enough there there to make this a book you can’t put down. The specter of an unsolved mob murder hangs over the story, hinting at a much deeper, darker tale. That too proves to be a promise that doesn’t quite deliver. What does pay off is a series of revelations that unfold in the book’s final third, where Shorto focuses less on his grandfather and more on his father and their own strained relationship, and all that brought it about. Here the memoir becomes more personal and poignant, and less of a historical account weighted down by asides about process and efforts to corroborate stories. As the hurts are revealed, they offer unexpected insights that traverse generations.
Shorto combines academic sources with news stories, court documents, FBI files, and extensive interviews with his namesake grandfather’s surviving associates and family members to produce a truly excellent, often harrowing investigation. Clearly, it was important to Shorto to research, understand, and confront his family’s history, and he has created a compelling, fresh, and resonant take on a key and fascinating aspect of American history. This will have wide appeal.
In a narrative full of sharp twists, Shorto learns, to his surprise, that his own father served jail time 'as a teenage gun wielder'—though in later years, his father, thoroughly assimilated, turned to sales and the think-and-grow-rich slogans of the postwar era ... A lively addition to the history of Italian American immigration and its discontents.
... insightful ... In telling Johnstown’s mob story, Shorto presents a fascinating institutional history of small-town organized crime and a moving family saga with equal amounts of detail and heart. Mob history lovers will especially enjoy this colorful account.
