Michael Franzese. I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse: Insider Tips from a Former Mob Boss. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009. 152 pages.

Books on how to success in business are plentiful and, I suspect, not that helpful. Most businesses probably don’t fail because of lack of motivation, but because they are undercapitalized. Time management is important, but having someone who can lend you enough money to get started is more important.

So I take business strategy books with a grain of salt. Like gambling strategy books, you’ve got to figure that if the author really had the secret of surefire business success, he’d be off starting more businesses, not hustling books.

Still, there are many things to be learned from reading about how others found success, so while there might not be too much help, you’ve got to figure that nothing you read is going to hurt you. In that spirit, I gave former mob moss Michael Franzese’s I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse a read.

Franzese, who knows more about producing and pressure than any CEO, illuminates this short book with many illustrations from his days as a capo in the Colombo organized crime family. These stories are both entertaining (to the extent that murder, extortion, and tax fraud are light entertainment) and engaging, because they show that Frazese’s points about respect, negotiations, and greed have great consequence.

The book is divided into eleven chapters, each covering a different aspect of Franzese’s philosophies. The best chapters are those that have the best application for readers: the introduction, which maps out Franzese’s “mobbed up” approach, “Lead with Your Brain, Not Your Mouth,” which counsels discretion and careful analysis rather than hot-headed boasting, “Master the Art of the Sit-Down,” a treatise on high-pressure mob negotiations that should be reading in every business school, and “Learn from Your Failures,” which points out that not every venture is successful. Like most business books, each chapter ends with a numbered recapitulation of the main points. (This is something I’ve never understood–the author’s pretty much saying he’s got no confidence in his writing, because if he did, you’d remember the crucial bits without a cheat sheet. It’s like they are their own Cliff Notes.)

Throughout the book, Franzese turns to two sources of widsom: Nicolo Machiavelli, whose The Prince is apparently read by mobsters in the joint as well as freshmen in Poli Sci 101, and King Solomon, whose Proverbs offer a countervailing compassion to Machiavelli’s cynical pragmatism. As the book progresses, one can see the struggle within Franzese himself between Machiavelli, who’s made him rich and powerful, and Solomon, who hopefully can bring him peace. It’s interesting, because in some ways Franzese in reminiscent of Solomon as author of Ecclesiastes, a man who’s been king an enjoyed everything that wealth and power can offer, but now realizes the futility of such aspirations.

While Franzese explains how you can be successful at organized crime or business, he is careful to remind readers that breaking the law has severe consequences and that eventually one’s misdeeds will probably catch up with him, one way or another. He makes this crystal clear in his “Closing Thoughts,” where he writes that, “The night I took the oath to become a made man, I was one of six recruits inducted into the family. I am the only one alive today. None of them died of natural causes” (151).

I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse is both a cautionary tale and a roadmap. Franzese shows where how got by following Machiavelli–rich and in prison–and where Solomon has brought him, to a less powerful but more rewarding place. It has a meaningful argument in favor of objective morals as opposed to situation-specific ethics, and, particularly in this age of corporate malfeasance, is recommended reading for anyone who has tough decisions to make.