UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 9
October 31, 1996
Reporter to talk about 'mob'

     Godfathers and Goodfellas: Making Your Living Covering the
Philadelphia Mafia" is the subject of a free, public presentation
by George Anastasia at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 6, in 100
Kirkbride Lecture Hall.
     As the Philadelphia's full-time organized crime reporter,
Anastasia once got a phone call from a mobster named Spike who
said, "I know where you live. I'm gonna come to your house and
bust your head open. I'm gonna shoot you."
     To top it off, Spike was calling collect.
     The award-winning reporter has chronicled the Mafia for more
than two decades and has authored two books: Blood and Honor:
Inside the Scarfo Mob-The Mafia's Most Violent Family (1991) and
Mobfather (1993).
     New York newsman Jimmy Breslin called Blood and Honor "the
best gangster book ever written."
     The grandson of Sicilian immigrants, Anastasia was born in
Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey. A graduate of Dartmouth
College, he is the recipient of more than a dozen awards for
investigative journalism.
     Since 1975, he has been with the Philadelphia Inquirer, most
recently specializing in organized and white collar crime.