McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Underworld

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Underworld

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3.85 of 5 stars 3.85  ·  rating details  ·  1,179 ratings  ·  173 reviews
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets. No one would foresee that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the globalization of organized crime....more
Hardcover, 375 pages
Published April 8th 2008 by Knopf (first published January 1st 2008)
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Whitaker
Misha Glenny is a journalist. That tells you what you need to know about the approach that he takes to the topic of globalised organised crime in this book. It's large reportorial, with minimal analysis and no overriding thesis. Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view. The advantage of this approach is that it delivers a punchy narrative; the disadvantage is that the subject remains an unwieldy morass. (♪ (view spoiler)[If you prefer not to read the book, but want to get a shor...more
Ericka
In my International Studies senior seminar we had to pick a book that dealt with globalization/globalism and present a project on it. Naturally, most people thought to pick the obvious such as The World is Flat. After a quick Amazon search this book popped up and I figured it had to be good because Glenny has always done an excellent job of writing about the Balkans (my love). He did not let me down!

McMafia reviews different aspects of organized crime and how it is spreading. He begins with the...more
Emily
Sep 01, 2009 Emily added it
saw an interview with the author on Charlie Rose - looks facinating!
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008...

And I just watched American Gangster over the weekend!

*****

Well this one has finally arrived from the library and I'm not sure I'm going to make it through before it has to go back. Its interesting reading but very dense and a bit depressing - an unrelenting parade of human greed, cruelty and avarice.

However, it is really interesting in its connections to international politics. Its also f...more
Edward
Things I learned from reading this book:
Illegal trade accounts for 20% of global GDP.
If you want a hit done right and cheaply, hire the Serbs.
The fall of communism is the single most important event accounting for the rise of global criminal syndicates.
There are a lot of brothels in Tel Aviv.
Bollywood and the Indian mafia go hand in hand.
Park and wash your money in Dubai.
Nigerian email scams are the real deal (they actually do originate in Nigeria).
A lot of pot comes from Vancouver BC.
People who...more
.50spiderbite Higgins
Coupled with the collapse of the USSR, criminal enterprise has become a global issue. Criminal enterprise is what propped up the USSR at the tale end of communism. When the iron curtain fell, many entrepreneurial types people who had made tons of cash by using communism to buy raw materials cheaply and then selling them at market price (sometimes at a 500-1000% markup) expanding their enterprises around the globe. And that's just the first two chapters.

The book touches on many different types o...more
Garrett
I don't know how he got access to all these thugs and mobsters, but Misha Glenny bravely gathered fascinating facts and stories on the world of organized crime and lived to write about it. McMafia looks primarily at the economics driving the black market. Glenny discusses protection rackets in Eastern Europe, prostitution and money laundering in Dubai, and marijuana trafficking in British Columbia. Glenny starts his examination with the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union (a vo...more
Jamie
This book grabbed me from the beginning due to my obsession with all things Eastern European. I learned of a "country" that doesn't really exist (Transnistria, a breakaway of Moldova) Lots about how criminals that you think don't like each other actually use those "hatreds" as excuses to work together (Serbs and Croats and Bosnians, anyone?)

Also, how war on drugs actually keeps organized crime flowing. If it were legal, nearly 60% of organized crime's income would be taken away. Yet another reas...more
Nicholas Whyte
" http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1238916.html[return][return]The book is an excellent run through the pervasive infiltration of organised crime around the world, which Glenny attributes largely to the collapse of the Soviet Union (though with a nod also to the US War on Drugs). He takes us on a breathless tour of the underworld in the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, India, Dubai, Nigeria, South Africa, North America, Colombia, Brazil, Japan and finally China - which will have a key role in the...more
Bookmarks Magazine

According to Glenny, organized crime currently accounts for a shocking 15 to 20 percent of global GDP

Matthew
I'm generally sceptical of books that purport to change one's view of the world, but when one of them does come along, its a welcome surprise. McMafia ranks one of the two best books I've read so far this year -- the other being Alan Weisman's The World Without Us -- in the very personal terms of having expanded my understanding of how the world works and the consequences of actions and events.

Glenny was the Guardian's and BBC's Central Europe correspondent. Realising how intertwined their ecno...more
Tim Pendry
I was initially wary of this account of contemporary organised crime. Misha Glenny's 'Fall of Yugoslavia' had frustrated me as good narrative but weak analysis. I need not have been so concerned.

Yes, Glenny still does not quite 'get' that he is being fed a line sometimes by people who have an interest in extending their own power. And, yes, he still trots out liberal-imperial cliches in the short epilogue. However, the vast bulk of the book rises above the ‘given’ ideology.

It provides an excel...more
David
This engaging book describes how organized crime operates all around the world. Some criminal organizations are very violent, while others are not, some are nationalistic, some are international in scope, and some are purely local. Often organized crime is in cahoots with the local authorities. In other regions, there is no local police force at all, so the crime organization fills in the gap--sometimes fulfilling a real need for protection by legitimate business owners. No country in the world...more
Nigel
This sobering and sometimes shocking survey of the new world disorder takes as its starting point the fall of the USSR and the subsequent orgiastic looting of Russia's money and resources, the rise of the mind-bogglingly wealthy oligarchs and the Russian mafia. Guns, drugs cars and human beings are all grist to the mill of these hyper-capitalists who cross international borders, subvent laws, rule by violence and yet, oddly enough, provide a modicum of order and stability in destabilised regions...more
Kotinka
McMafia is certainly an apt title for this book; written in an easy-to-consume style, this book munches it's way through global organised crime networks at such a high pace you'll be suffering from indigestion before you've reached the fiftieth page.

Glenny does succeed, as I had hoped before opening the book, in illuminating some of the fascinating, charasmatic and plain scary people behind the world's extraordinary shadow economy. And yet, frustratingly, the book never quite manages to settle...more
Daniel
I had read this book awhile ago and have started reading it again for research related to a new project.
This book is phenomenal, in my opinion. It traces organized crime operations around the world, starting with the Balkans and moving through Asia, Africa, North and South America. Although each chapter is another region, Misha Glenny does an excellent job of showing how each region is connected and interdependent. Not only that, he describes the 'grey areas' of organized crime, giving a little...more
Paul Pessolano
This book is about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Globalization, and how these two factors brought about a criminal underworld that puts the Mafia to shame.

I don't want to discourage anyone from reading this book, but I must say in all honesty, it is a very difficult book to read. The content is excellent, however, the author provides WTMI (way too much information). This is very evident in the first quarter of the book and once you get past that it becomes a little easier to r...more
Nicholas
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Anandh Sundar
I read this book twice-once before my foray into the world of finance and once after(recently). While the difference in the insights/perceptions I got from the book led me to conclude that the author is 'dumbing down' criminal finance,further reflection made me think that this is the greatness of the book-to reveal to both layperson and professionals the havoc that seemingly innocent financial decisions may create.

Specially for those in the finance world, work pressures/lack of professional upda...more
Natalie Keating
This book is EXCELLENT if you're interested in the nasty, nitty-gritty aspects of the criminal underworld –an underworld, that, shockingly enough, affects us regular people more than you realize. Misha Glenny traces the rise of global crime, which is connected with globalization, in diverse places such as Russia and other post-Soviet countries, the Balkans, Colombia, Brazil, Japan, China, and Nigeria, to name a few. He focuses on all aspects of crime: drug trafficking, human trafficking, money l...more
Brian
Kind of depressing look at the rise of the organized crime across the planet. Turns out "free trade" and "globalization" were the best things to happen to the world's mafias since the fall of Communism.

Also, did you know that Americans are bad? Well, they are. Just accept it. This author seems to think that no one else on the planet has to take responsibility for anything except Americans.

Sigh.
Will James
A very accessible, yet at times needlessly journalistic, look at organised crime since the dawn of globalisation in the 1980s and 1990s. From an IR perspective, it really drives home how important the role this 'shadow economy' plays in global finance and economics, and the pernicious and overwhelming influence organised crime plays in the international economy. Glenny does a great job of reminding the reader that organised crime is not simply a criminal justice issue, but a phenomenon that shou...more
Jim
Nov 20, 2010 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: crime
A romping good read that was an eye-opener in a host of ways. You think "organised crime" and immeadiately assosciate it with the US, not Dubai, Bosnia, Israel, Russia, Nigeria - but clearly you should. Combine the Mafia with state sanction, if not downright encouragement and sponsorship, and you have a recipe for chaos, violence and a literal license to print money. The author skips breathlessly from one emerging economy to another in a "You thought Israel was bad, let's visit Dubai!" kind of w...more
Thomas
If you want to know what a challenge policing the global economy is, look no further than McMafia. From traditional Mafia-style extortion rackets to networking hacker fraud, it's everywhere. When the Soviet Union collapsed organized crime was there to take advantage of the shifting economy. Under-regulation allows criminals to operate with impunity, while over-regulation encourages smuggling and corruption. It's as if crime is simply a fact of nature, created in part by economic imbalance in soc...more
Mike
This book is about criminal networks across the globe and how they have changed with globalization. There is an investigation into how the larger criminal networks do drugs, prostitution, financial fraud, black market cigarette, illegal weapons trading across the globe. It is hard as a journalist to get much information on these networks, so the story suffers from a scattered, gossip driven approach. The author makes claims like how the legalization of drugs in the USA would limit the criminal t...more
Gar
A really interesting overview of how organised crime works, and how it has adapted to globalisation.

Misha Glenny obviously has an excellent understanding of how the underworld functions. His explanations of the emergence of the Russian Mafia, the plight of trafficked women and the relationships between muscle, oligarchs and corrupt officials were eye-opening for me. It was fascinating to realise how protectionism on the one hand and lack of global regulation on the other facilitates the criminal...more
Lisa
This was a gripping and excellent book. I really enjoy Glenny's work - I hope that he continues in this vein. Glenny writes about how institutions (and lack theoreof) foster transnational crime rings - mostly smuggling drugs, arms and women from disadvantaged countries to the US, EU and Japan. There are so many hilarious, disgusting and tear-wrenching anecdotes in this book, and Glenny writes as if we are travelling companions across the desolation of Eastern Europe, Africa and China. The chapte...more
La Petite Américaine
Long, boring book blow fuse in brain, make me stupid like cave-man. I write review anyway.

Organized crime, bad. Exist everywhere. Even on internet. Must stop organized crime in silly ways suggested by author, a BBC journalist.

Booga booga.

Anyway, back to my normal self.

The most interesting part of this book were the interviews and conversations with wild criminals and gansters in various corners of the world from Odessa to Dubai to Colombia -- almost as fascinating as these billionaire crimina...more
Wais F.
Great piece of non-fiction by Misha Glenny that encompasses many countries/parts of the world which not only gives you a greater understanding of the underworld in these places but also the political, social and cultural elements that all relate with organised crime.

Glenny starts off in the Balkans and Russia and moves to Israel, India, Dubai, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, Japan and China amongst other countries I may have missed out. Glenny's main arguments are of globalisation making...more
Byron Wright
Interesting to read, but not an easy read. I'm stunned by how pervasive criminality is in the world. I'm not completely naive, but didn't realize how bad it was.



I think the big takeway from this book is how interconnected various crimes are and that what we often think of a victim less crimes like dope smoking support many activities that we would not want to be associated with. Also interesting to note that organized crime moves in and provides order when the state either cannot or does not.
Earl Grey Tea
Despite the title being a bit of a turn off for me, this book did contain a lot of information about the world of organized crime. Seeing that my upbringing consisted of a life in a Midwestern suburb, I've never really been exposed directly to any these situations. Or at least, I don't think I have; I am not the most observant person.

Misha Glenny starts his book with one of the biggest events in modern history that lead to the rapid expansion of organized crime: the fall of the Soviet Union. Eac...more
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