In Praise of Nepotism
A History of Family Enterprise from King David to George W. Bush
Chapter One
We're All Goodfellas Now: An Introduction to the Nepotistic System
Most Americans have seen Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, a
Hollywood epic that celebrates three generations of an American
mafia dynasty. Based on an equally popular novel by Mario Puzo, The
Godfather's astonishing success fueled the rise of its director and
his stars and spawned a host of imitations, establishing the
gangster movie as the definitive American film genre of the late
twentieth century. References to The Godfather permeate popular
culture. Many people know the script almost by heart. Real gangsters
are even said to have adopted the rituals and language of the
Corleone family-a strange case of life imitating art.
Most influential of all was The Godfather's humanizing vision of the
mafia itself. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the public perception
of the mafia was formed by grainy images of gangsters lying sprawled
in pools of blood or twisting their guilt-ridden hands during
televised anticrime hearings. Puzo and Coppola took u ... read full excerpt from: In Praise of Nepotism ebook
