Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob

Historian Shorto (Revolution Song: The Story of America’s Founding in Six Remarkable Lives) gets personal with this insightful family memoir about his mobster grandfather’s rise to power in postwar Johnstown, Pa. When a cousin tries to goad Shorto into exploring the family’s checkered past, he first claims it’s “not his thing.” But he soon realizes that researching his grandfather’s life is a rare opportunity to learn how organized crime became “as much a part of mid-century American life as the hot dog.” Shorto digs into his grandfather’s legacy in collaboration with his ailing father, which brings the two closer together. His grandfather, a philandering drunk who died alone at a racetrack in 1981, helped found in 1960 a criminal network that responded to the public’s huge thirst for gambling by setting up gambling operations including eight-ball, backroom card tables, pinball machines, and “tip seals,” a tear-off game much like today’s scratch-off games. The boom spans the 1950s, but became a casualty of reform movements by the anti-Mafia Kennedy administration, as well as state and local governments. 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. (Feb.)