First-hand tales of New York’s most notorious Mafia families Author talk and book signing with Selwyn Raab
Sel Raab’s Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires is the definitive book on New York’s Five Families. In celebration of the book’s newly updated 20th anniversary edition, he’s coming to The Mob Museum to speak about the colorful past of New York’s Mafia and how it’s reinventing itself for the 21st century.
Raab’s groundbreaking book traces the history of the Cosa Nostra, its astronomical growth in America, how its culture helped it avoid conviction for decades, how it was able to reorganize after several government victories, and how it’s profiting once again in the digital age.
Raab will share the thrilling insider stories and insights that are a direct result of his 40 years of reporting on the most legendary figures in organized crime in The Big Apple. This is an event everyone will want to see!
Author
Selwyn Raab
Selwyn Raab was born in New York City and educated at City College of New York. Following college, Raab began work for a series of metropolitan newspapers beginning in 1956 as a reporter with the Bridgeport, Connecticut, Herald. Raab took a position as a reporter with the Newark Star Ledger, where he remained until 1960, and then moved his reporting and journalism skills into the world of New York City newspapers working for the New York World Telegram and Sun for six years.
Beginning in 1966, Raab took eight years off from the world of print journalism to first become a news editor and producer for WNBC-TV in New York (1966-1971) and later as executive producer for WNET-TV (PBS) in New York from 1971-1974.
In 1974, Raab once more moved back into print as a reporter for the New York Times where he remained until 2000.
He is the author of previous books such as Justice in the Back Room and Mob Lawyer and has appeared countless times in both local and national news shows and in documentaries about the Mafia for the History Channel and A & E. Raab also played a key role in exposing fabricated testimony surrounding the conviction of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and in a separate case won investigative journalism awards for obtaining evidence that helped exonerate George Whitmore, Jr., a youth falsely accused of a triple-murder. He lives in New York.
The Five Families of New York