The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
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moved to an apartment house in the Bronx. Don Corleone was considering buying a 
house in Long Island, but he wanted to fit this in with other plans he was formulating. 
Vito Corleone was a man with vision. All the great cities of America were being torn by 
underworld strife. Guerrilla wars by the dozen flared up, ambitious hoodlums trying to 
carve themselves a bit of empire; men like Corleone himself were trying to keep their 
borders and rackets secure. Don Corleone saw that the newspapers and government 
agencies were using these killings to get stricter and stricter laws, to use harsher police 
methods. He foresaw that public indignation might even lead to a suspension of 
democratic procedures which could be fatal to him and his people. His own empire, 
internally, was secure. He decided to bring peace to all the warring factions in New York 
City and then in the nation. 
He had no illusions about the dangerousness of his mission. He spent the first year 
meeting with different chiefs of gangs in New York, laying the groundwork, sounding 
them out, proposing spheres of influence that would be honored by a loosely bound 
confederated council. But there were too many factions, too many special interests that 
conflicted. Agreement was impossible. Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history 
Don Corteone decided that order and peace were impossible until the number of 
reigning states had been reduced to a manageable number. 
There were five or six “Families” too powerful to eliminate. But the rest, the 
neighborhood Black Hand terrorists, the free-lance shylocks, the strong-arm 
bookmakers operating without the proper, that is to say paid, protection of the legal 
authorities, would have to go. And so he mounted what was in effect a colonial war 
against these people and threw all the resources of the Corleone organization against 
them. 
The pacification of the New York area took three years and had some unexpected 
rewards. At first it took the form of bad luck. A group of mad-dog Irish stickup artists the 
Don had marked for extermination almost carried the day with sheer Emerald Isle elan. 
By chance, and with suicidal bravery, one of these Irish gunmen pierced the Don’s 
protective cordon and put a shot into his chest. The assassin was immediately riddled 
with bullets but the damage was done. 
However this gave Sanrtino Corleone his chance. With his father out of action, Sonny 
took command of a troop, his own regime, with the rank of caporegime, and like a 
young, untrumpeted Napoleon, showed a genius for city warfare. He also showed a 

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