Underboss

Sammy Gravano, known as Sammy the Bull, rose to become the highest-ranking American Mafia member ever to switch sides. Peter Maas, the author of Serpico, tells Gravano's story and takes readers into the private workings of the Cosa Nostra, from the inside.

Gravano served as underboss of the Gambino crime family, the second-in-command position, and later testified against the family's boss, John Gotti. Maas shows a hidden world where ambition, desire, money, and betrayal run through everyday dealings, and where a violent death is always a possibility.

The book also explores loyalty: to whom a person owes it, and what one can reasonably expect in return from the people one has chosen to trust.