ALL ABOUT FRANK COSTELLO

They called him the Prime Minister of the Underworld. He ran the American Mafia with a phone call and a favor — and never carried a gun.

On a May night in 1957, a gunman fired point-blank at Frank Costello's head in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment building. He survived, told police he had seen nothing, and went back to business. To understand how a man can take a bullet at sixty-six and treat it as a negotiating position, you have to go back: to a hill village in Calabria built as a refuge for outlaws, and to a four-year-old boy who crossed the Atlantic sleeping in his mother's iron cooking pot.

ALL ABOUT FRANK COSTELLO is a fast, immersive, and richly detailed portrait of the most powerful and most untouchable boss in American Mafia history: the slum kid who discovered that a favor is worth more than a gun, the bootleg admiral with his own fleet and air force, the man who handpicked judges and owned Tammany Hall, the celebrity gangster who lunched with senators and got a manicure every day.

Inside, you'll discover:

- The street education that turned Francesco Castiglia into Frank Costello

- How Prohibition built a criminal empire with ships, seaplanes, and radio stations

- The secret machinery by which a mobster chose New York's judges and mayors

- The Kefauver hearings, the "hand ballet," and the famous walkout that made him a national obsession

- His war with Vito Genovese and the bullet that ended an era

- The real man behind Don Corleone: the voice, the legend, and the truth

Part of the ALL ABOUT collection: short, modern biographies for readers who want the full story of a remarkable life without reading 800 pages to get it. One coffee. One sitting. One unforgettable life.