Excellent Cadavers(a term used in Sicily to distinguish the assassination of prominent government officials from the hundreds of common criminals killed in the course of routine mafia business) tells of the remarkable investigation spearheaded by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two Sicilian prosecutors who in the 1980s took the war against the Mafia further than anyone had ever dared.

In 1992, aware that the two magistrates were without the complete support of the Italian government, the Mafia assassinated them. In death they were hailed as national heroes; the massive public outcry demanded their investigations be completed. The outcome: the toppling of crucial alliances that had forged political rule in Italy since WWII and the criminal indictment of Italy's most prominent leaders.

Alexander Stille's first book,Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, was chosen by theTime Literary Supplementas one of the best books of 1992, and received theLos Angeles TimesBook Award for history. SinceExcellent Cadavershe has writtenThe Future of the PastandThe Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi. He has written for theBoston Globe,theNew York Review of Books,theNew York Times,theToronto Globe&Mailand theNew Yorker.Heis also the San Paolo Professor of International Journalism at Columbia. Stille lives in New York.

A true crime classic: the brutal account of the battle to destroy the modern-day mafia