George De Stefano

Welcome to my website.

I am an author, feature writer and critic whose work has appeared in books, magazines, academic journals, newspapers, and online. As a writer I’m most interested in culture and politics and how they intersect. I’ve written about music (rock, blues, Latin, jazz, “world”), film, politics, race and racism, sexuality and sexual politics. My writing has appeared in The Nation, Newsday, The Advocate, Film Comment, the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Cineaste, Gay City News (New York) and other print publications.

I currently write about music and popular culture for the leading online publication PopMatters (www.popmatters.com). My literary reviews and essays appear in the New York Journal of Books (www.nyjb.com), an exciting new online home for serious book reviewing. I write about world music for Rootsworld (www.rootsworld.com), and about Italian and Italian American topics for I-Italy (www.i-italy.org).

I have contributed to two academic titles published in 2011, Mafia Movies (University of Toronto) and The Essential Sopranos Reader (University of Kentucky). The first is a groundbreaking collection of critical essays on American and European films about organized crime; the latter comprises papers presented at the “The Sopranos: A Wake” conference held in 2008 in New York.

My non-fiction book, An Offer We Can’t Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America (Faber and Faber/​Farrar, Straus, Giroux) examines America’s enduring fascination with Italian and Italian American organized crime, as depicted in the movies, on TV, and in fiction. In the book I try to explain why the “Mafia Myth” is one of the longest-running shows in popular culture, and how the mythology relates to the actual history of not only organized crime but of Italian immigration and Italian American history and culture.

The New York Times said “De Stefano knows the gangster genre inside out, making it a pleasure to follow his thoughts on favorites like ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Donnie Brasco,’ ‘Goodfellas’ and the ‘Godfather’ trilogy, as well as lesser-known films like ‘A Bronx Tale.’” The Boston Globe called it “a thoughtful, thorough analysis tracing the evolution of these vexing pop-culture icons, why their ‘'dangerous allure’ remains an enduring attraction, and how they impact perceptions about Italian-Americans.”

The actor/​director John Turturro said: “For anyone who's interested in the Mafia, An Offer We Can't Refuse is essential reading on the subject.

In 2012, you can see me in a new History Channel documentary, “The Godfather Legacy,” about the film’s continuing influence on popular culture 40 years after its release. I’m a talking head in another documentary, “Beyond Wiseguys” (2008) by Pacific Street Films and Beachcomber Films. The doc was shown in all the major PBS markets and it still pops up from time to time on public television.

I’m working on a few new projects – a piece for a planned book about post-WWII Italian immigration, as well as a couple of book proposals.

If you find my works here interesting, feel free to shoot me an e-mail through this website. If you're an agent or an editor, hit me up!

George de Stefano