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Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo. Jane C. Schneider and Peter T. Schneider. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 339 pp.
The popular media, and sometimes even scholarly literature, suggest that the Mafia is a highly successful criminal organization that is difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate because it has deep roots in Sicilian history and culture. Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider go a long way to dispel this popular (mis)conception. Reversible Destiny brings together a great deal of information on the Mafia in Sicily, including a vast literature that appears only in the Italian. The authors make use of this information to provide a historical account that traces the development of the modern Mafia to the 19th century and the unification of Italy. The Mafia, then, has relatively shallow roots in Sicilian history. However, the link to Sicilian culture is much more complicated. Schneider and Schneider successfully argue that the Mafia cannot be viewed as a mere reflection of Sicilian culture. By focusing on some of the ambiguities, contradictions, and changes that surround Mafia ideology and behavior,...