Download or read book The Crooked Ladder written by James M. O'Kane and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnic organized crime is a phenomenon that has been largely ignored by social scientists and historians. "The Crooked Ladder" represents a groundbreaking attempt to describe how some members of ethnic minorities have utilized organized crime as one vehicle of upward mobility, advancing from lower-class status to middle-class power and respectability.