Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System by Robert Saviano
Italy looks like a boot!
The summary looks like a summary!
A groundbreaking, unprecedented bestseller in Italy, Roberto Saviano's insider account traces the decline of the city of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network more powerful and violent than the Mafia. The Camorra is an elaborate, international system dealing in drugs, high fashion, construction, and toxic waste, and its influence has entirely transformed life in Campania, the province surrounding Naples.
Since seeing his first murder victim, at thirteen, Roberto Saviano has watched the changes in his home city. For Gomorrah, he disappeared into the Camorra and witnessed up close the drug cartel's audacious, sophisticated, and far-reaching corruption that has paralyzed his home city and introduced the world to a new breed of organized crime.
This one was a DOOZY. If you want to feel warm fuzzies about the future of the world, this book will not do it. I'm not going to do quotes on this one; there wasn't a lot of humor in it and it mostly just bummed me out. I'll just give you an overview of some fresh horrors happening in the world! YAY!
So we start off learning about counterfeit clothes. But they're not really counterfeit; they're like...fraudulent? They're ordered from the actual designers (haute couture level), they're made with the same materials and with the same quality. But they're made in this hellhole by people getting pennies for their work. And then after this artisan gets a FRACTION of what they deserve, their work is walking red carpets. Alright, a quote works here. "Chinese factories in China were competing with Chinese factories in Italy." So about those sweatshops...
Maybe it's naïve; probably it's naïve; but with the high-high end designers, I figured they had ethical practices and treated employees fairly.
Next we moved on to drugs and general violence. That part was pretty much as I expected. Same story you hear about drug peddling and "gang wars" all over. Same with the construction stuff. The families get their claws into every aspect of business that they can, and construction is a pretty good bet.
Last was waste disposal, and this was even worse than the clothes stuff. The amount of people and effort involved in dumping this shit irresponsibly was disgusting. So you've got toxic, hazardous chemicals mixed into fertilizer, hanging out at the bottom of the ocean, and chilling in buried barrels. Just hanging around poisoning the water, air, and earth. And it's really fucking depressing to know there are SO MANY people that don't give a single shit about the future or anyone other than themselves. And SO MANY of those people have immense power to fuck with everyone and everything else in the world. YAY.
As awful as the content was, the book was very well written and engaging while still getting all the facts and statistics across. And there were actually a lot of good quotes. It's just that I couldn't go back and look into all of it again, for my own brainbox. It's important for this stuff to get out there, absolutely. But damn it, people suck.
So, HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY. How do we get some orcas stationed over by Naples?
