Today, it never occurs to anyone to imagine the mafia as a spontaneously emerging group of noble robbers, proudly challenging a society that is unable to protect them from the blows of fate. But still too often mafiosi become heroes of books and films, and for children in many countries, including Russia, parents buy the board game “Mafia” in a toy store. The author of the book, Fabrizio Calvi, is a French journalist who has spent many years studying history and collecting documentary material in the homeland of the mafia - Sicily. F. Calvi is trying to penetrate the inner sanctum of this secret criminal organization and talk about the customs and laws by which its daily life and the activities of its “families” are built: how they initiate members of the mafia, how the territory is divided between clans, which is why outbreaks wars, who and how deals with the unwanted. The book provides a chronology of events related to the activities of the mafia in Sicily from 1950 to 1985.