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A review by edgwareviabank
McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime by Misha Glenny
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
In between busy weeks at work, failed attempts at staying awake for more than two pages before bed, and long pauses as I was making time for other hobbies, McMafia took me two months to read. That's why I usually save chunky nonfiction for when I'm on holiday and can give it uninterrupted focus. Since this year I dedicated that time to Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain, and the ebook was calling at me from the library app, I thought I'd try fitting it into my daily routine.
The book is slow-paced, packed with data, interesting stories, and peculiar characters from different times and places; I thought it was worth every minute, even when it felt drier than my usual book choices and to progress with. The connections it exposes between organised crime all over the world were eye-opening to me: I realised books, films and TV had given me a basic knowledge about criminal enterprises in specific geographic areas (for example, the drug industry in South America, or some of the yakuza's dealings in Japan), but I knew nothing at all about how they all tie together and how they have evolved since the '80s.
I'm very glad I could renew it twice in a row with no queue; otherwise, storing its huge volume of names and information in my mind until the next time I could borrow it would have been tough. Very glad I picked it up and stuck with it: I knew from the start it wasn't going to be an easy read, but the level of detail it goes into kept me engaged from start to end.
The book is slow-paced, packed with data, interesting stories, and peculiar characters from different times and places; I thought it was worth every minute, even when it felt drier than my usual book choices and to progress with. The connections it exposes between organised crime all over the world were eye-opening to me: I realised books, films and TV had given me a basic knowledge about criminal enterprises in specific geographic areas (for example, the drug industry in South America, or some of the yakuza's dealings in Japan), but I knew nothing at all about how they all tie together and how they have evolved since the '80s.
I'm very glad I could renew it twice in a row with no queue; otherwise, storing its huge volume of names and information in my mind until the next time I could borrow it would have been tough. Very glad I picked it up and stuck with it: I knew from the start it wasn't going to be an easy read, but the level of detail it goes into kept me engaged from start to end.