This book is an account both of the old Mafia of the Godfather and of its transformation into a network of gangsters and capitalists today, posing a major threat to democratic politics. The new Mafia combines large-scale business and banking activity with drug dealing, political corruption and widespread violence. Powerful, ruthless and rich, it has convulsed Southern Italy with a spate of murders. Its victims include an MP, a celebrated general, judges and prosecutors, policemen and ordinary citizens. It has turned itself into an entrepreneurial machine of a formidable kind, enjoying advantages denied to ordinary capitalist companies.