The Mad Ones

The Mad Ones chronicles the rise and fall of the Gallo brothers, a trio of reckless young gangsters whose revolution against New York City’s Mafia provoked a bloody civil war that made headlines around the world.

Crazy Joe, Kid Blast and Larry Gallo are steeped in legend, from Bob Dylan’s eleven-minute ballad “Joey” to fictionalisations central to The Godfather trilogy and Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Called the toughest gang in the city by the NYPD, the Gallos hailed from the rough Red Hook neighbourhood on the Brooklyn waterfront. As low-level Mafiosi, they were expected to serve their Don quietly, but the brothers stood apart from typical gangsters with their hip style, fierce ambition, and Crazy Joe’s manic idealism.

Joey aspired to be more than a common hood and immersed himself among the Beatniks and bohemians of the Greenwich Village. Yearning to live the life of an artist, he wrote poetry, painted and got his kicks devouring existential philosophy. Celebrated as the “king of the streets” by Dylan, Joey was embraced by the city’s leading cultural figures as an antihero straight out of Camus.

Here for the first time, is the complete story of the Gallos’s war against the powerful Cosa Nostra, an epic crime saga that culminates in Crazy Joe’s murder on the streets of Little Italy. Where he was gunned down mid-bite into a forkful of spaghetti in 1972. The Mad Ones is wild entertainment and a significant work of cultural history.

What they said:

‘Spectacular.’ – THE SUN

‘Crazy Joe Gallo was the brutal Brooklyn mobster who became a Manhattan cause celebre – until he was gunned down in Umberto’s Clam House in 1972. This lively biography charts the Gallo clan’s unlikely rise.’ – ESQUIRE

‘Riveting, richly atmospheric pulp non-fiction…prose as tight and hard-boiled as any James Ellroy novel.’ – KIRKUS REVIEWS

‘Joey Gallo died at 43 though not before leaving an indelible imprint both on New York and American culture…In The Mad Ones, Tom Folsom deftly evokes a wacky world populated by the sort of characters celebrated by Jack Kerouac.’ – THE NEW YORK TIMES

‘You couldn’t make this up. Gallo is a compelling character, a sort of thinking man’s hoodlum, probably psychotic but also fearless…His existential flirtations spice up an already good gangland yarn…The real fun of this book is the reader is never quite sure what is going to happen on the next page.’ – SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

‘Entertaining…Crazy Joe Gallo and his gangster brothers inspired everyone from Francis Ford Coppola to Bob Dylan, and when Joe was gunned down in 1972, New York’s cultural elite mounred the loss of one of their own.’ – DETAILS MAGAZINE

‘Read it, or wake up with a horse’s head in your bed.’ – MAXIM

About the author:

TOM FOLSOM is a writer, director, and producer of television documentaries for A&E and Showtime in the US, and the co-author of Mr. Untouchable: The Rise and Fall of the Black Godfather (Milo Books) written with its subject, drug-kingpin Nicky Barnes. He lives in New York City.