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"Organized crime historian Paul R. Kavieff has researched this influential criminal, uncovering new details of his sophisticated criminal organization. All the names, dates, and brutal murders are described here, in a unique history of labor unrest in turn-of-the 20th century New York."--Jacket.
The Life and Times of Lepke Buchalter is the first biography of the only organized crime boss to be executed in the United States. At the height of his power, Louis"Lepke" Buchalter had a stronghold on the garment, banking and flour tracking industries. As the overseer of the killing-on-assignment machine known as "Murder Inc.," his penchant for murder was notorious. This impeccably researched book traces his story from childhood, through his incredibly sophisticated rackets, to his ultimate conviction and execution."
The riveting true story of the rise and fall of Murder, Inc. and the executioner-turned-informant whose mysterious death became a turning point in Mob history. In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was underway that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Commission. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel—but before he could testify, his shattered body was discovered on a rooftop outside his heavily-guarded hotel room. Was it a botched escape, or punishment for betraying the loyalty of the country’s most powerful mobsters? Michael Cannell's A Brotherhood Betrayed traces the history of Murder, Inc. through Reles’ rise from street punk to murder chieftain to stool pigeon, ending with his fateful death on a Coney Island rooftop. It resurrects a time when crime became organized crime: a world of money and power, depravity and corruption, street corner ambushes and elaborately choreographed hits by wise-cracking foot soldiers with names like Buggsy Goldstein and Tick Tock Tannenbaum. For a brief moment before World War II erupted, America fixated on the delicate balance of trust and betrayal on the Brooklyn streets. This is the story of the one man who tipped the balance.
In the Godfather Garden is the true story of the life of Richie “the Boot” Boiardo, one of the most powerful and feared men in the New Jersey underworld. The Boot cut his teeth battling the Jewish gang lord Abner Longy Zwillman on the streets of Newark during Prohibition and endured to become one of the East Coast’s top mobsters, his reign lasting six decades. To the press and the police, this secretive Don insisted he was nothing more than a simple man who enjoyed puttering about in his beloved vegetable garden on his Livingston, New Jersey, estate. In reality, the Boot was a confidante and kingmaker of politicians, a friend of such celebrities as Joe DiMaggio and George Raft, an acquaintance of Joseph Valachi—who informed on the Boot in 1963—and a sworn enemy of J. Edgar Hoover. The Boot prospered for more than half a century, remaining an active boss until the day he died at the age of ninety-three. Although he operated in the shadow of bigger Mafia names across the Hudson River (think Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a cofounder of the Mafia killer squad Murder Inc. with Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro), the Boot was equally as brutal and efficient. In fact, there was a mysterious place in the gloomy woods behind his lovely garden—a furnace where many thought the Boot took certain people who were never seen again. Richard Linnett provides an intimate look inside the Boot’s once-powerful Mafia crew, based on the recollections of a grandson of the Boot himself and complemented by never-before-published family photos. Chronicled here are the Prohibition gang wars in New Jersey as well as the murder of Dutch Schultz, a Mafia conspiracy to assassinate Newark mayor Kenneth Gibson, and the mob connections to several prominent state politicians. Although the Boot never saw the 1972 release of The Godfather, he appreciated the similarities between the character of Vito Corleone and himself, so much so that he hung a sign in his beloved vegetable garden that read “The Godfather Garden.” There’s no doubt he would have relished David Chase’s admission that his muse in creating the HBO series The Sopranos was none other than “Newark’s erstwhile Boiardo crew.”
“Mr. Gross's direct style is full of sentiment but never maudlin and well-suited to scenes of violent action. Button Man has plenty of zip–and lots of moxie, too." –Wall Street Journal "This is a big, heartfelt handshake of a book, with all the street-scrambling energy that distinguishes the best fiction of Jeffrey Archer and Mario Puzo." –USA Today Following up The One Man and The Saboteur, Gross's next historical thriller brings to life the drama of the birth of organized crime in 1930s New York City from the tale of one family. After a string of New York Times bestselling suburban thrillers, Andrew Gross has reinvented himself as a writer of historical thrillers. In his latest novel, Button Man, he delivers a stirring story of a Jewish family brought together in the dawn of the women's garment business and torn apart by the birth of organized crime in New York City in the 1930s. Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough in a tiny flat on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father thrust them into having to fend for themselves and support their large family. Morris, the youngest, dropped out of school at twelve years old and apprenticed himself to a garment cutter in a clothing factory; Sol headed to accounting school; but Harry, scarred by a family tragedy, fell in with a gang of thugs as a teenager. Morris steadily climbs through the ranks at the factory until at twenty-one he finally goes out on his own, convincing Sol to come work with him. But Harry can't be lured away from the glamour, the power, and the money that come from his association with Louis Buchalter, whom Morris has battled with since his youth and who has risen to become the most ruthless mobster in New York. And when Buchalter sets his sights on the unions that staff the garment makers' factories, a fatal showdown is inevitable, pitting brother against brother. This new novel is equal parts historical thriller, rich with the detail of a vibrant New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, and family saga, based on Andrew Gross's own family story and on the history of the era, complete with appearances by real-life characters like mobsters Louis Lepke and Dutch Schultz and special prosecutor Thomas Dewey, and cements Gross's reputation as today's most atmospheric and original historical thriller writer.
A riveting history of the Mafia from 1860s Sicily to 1960s America—as narrated by a former heist expert and Gambino family mobster. The mafia has long held a powerful sway over our collective cultural imagination. But how many of us truly understand how a clandestine Sicilian criminal organization came to exert its influence over nearly every level of American society? In Borgata: Rise of Empire, former mobster Louis Ferrante pulls back the curtain on the criminal organization that transformed America. From the potent political cauldron of nineteenth-century Sicily to New Orleans, New York and the gangster paradise of Las Vegas, Ferrante traces the social, economic, and political forces that powered the mafia’s unstoppable rise. Ferrante’s vivid portrayal of early American mobsters—Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky—fills in crucial gaps of the mafia narrative to deliver the most comprehensive account yet of the world’s most famous criminal fraternity. Borgata: Rise of Empire—the first in a three-volume epic history—is a groundbreaking achievement from a man who has seen it all from the inside. In this masterful accomplishment, Ferrante takes the reader from the mafia’s inauspicious beginnings to the height of their power as the most influential criminal network in the country.
Our Gang provides a fascinating historical portrait of the Jewish criminal world from the era of mass immigration through Prohibition and beyond. Jenna Weissman Joselit traces the origins, nature, patterns, location, and impact of Jewish crime from the early years, when it was inextricably bound up with the East Side community as a whole, with criminals living among the more or less law-abiding citizens they preyed upon, to the post-World War I period and the gradual assimilation and absorption of Jewish crime into the mainstream of the American underworld. Parallel with this theme is a broader one: the New York Jewish community's reaction to Jewish crime, evolving from disbelief to denial to concern and the establishment of a network of correctional and preventive agencies, and finally—as the nature of Jewish crime changed, and as the community itself felt a growing sense of security—a sort of acceptance.
In 1940 and 1941 a group of ruthless gangsters from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood became the focus of media frenzy when they—dubbed “Murder Inc.,” by New York World-Telegram reporter Harry Feeney—were tried for murder. It is estimated that collectively they killed hundreds of people during a reign of terror that lasted from 1931 to 1940. As the trial played out to a packed courtroom, shocked spectators gasped at the outrageous revelations made by gang leader Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and his pack of criminal accomplices. News of the trial proliferated throughout the country; at times it received more newspaper coverage than the unabated war being waged overseas. The heinous crimes attributed to Murder, Inc., included not only murder and torture but also auto theft, burglary, assaults, robberies, fencing stolen goods, distribution of illegal drugs, and just about any “illegal activity from which a revenue could be derived.” When the trial finally came to a stunning unresolved conclusion in November 1941, newspapers generated record headlines. Once the trial was over, tales of the Murder, Inc., gang became legendary, spawning countless books and memoirs and providing inspiration for the Hollywood gangster-movie genre. These men were fearsome brutes with an astonishing ability to wield power. People were fascinated by the “gangster” figure, which had become a symbol for moral evil and contempt and whose popularity showed no signs of abating. As both a study in criminal behavior and a cultural fascination that continues to permeate modern society, the reverberations of “Murder, Inc.” are profound, including references in contemporary mass media. The Murder, Inc., story is as much a tale of morality as it is a gangster history, and Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life by Robert Whalen meshes both topics clearly and meticulously, relating the gangster phenomenon to modern moral theory. Each chapter covers an aspect of the Murder, Inc., case and reflects on its ethical elements and consequences. Whalen delves into the background of the criminals involved, their motives, and the violent death that surrounded them; New York City’s immigrant gang culture and its role as “Gangster City”; fiery politicians Fiorello La Guardia and Thomas E. Dewey and the choices they made to clean up the city; and the role of the gangster in popular culture and how it relates to “real life.” Whalen puts a fresh spin on the two topics, providing a vivid narrative with both historical and moral perspective.
While the later history of the New York Mafia has received extensive attention, what has been conspicuously absent until now is an accurate and conversant review of the formative years of Mafia organizational growth. David Critchley examines the Mafia recruitment process, relations with Mafias in Sicily, the role of non-Sicilians in New York’s organized crime Families, kinship connections, the Black Hand, the impact of Prohibition, and allegations that a "new" Mafia was created in 1931. This book will interest Historians, Criminologists, and anyone fascinated by the American Mafia.
Beginning as a group of delinquents committing petty crimes, they became Detroit's infamous Purple Gang, of one of the most notorious organized crime groups of the 20th century. The photographs in this fascinating collection chronologically follow the evolution of the Purples from their days as a juvenile street gang through their rise to power and eventual self-destruction. Detroit had a gold rush atmosphere and a thriving black market during the 1920s that attracted gangsters and unsavory characters from all over the country. The gang's reputation for hijacking and terror spread far, and they became associates with Al Capone, their location a perfect midway point to smuggle Canadian whisky across the border and down into Chicago. Their reputation was such that they were even suspected by the FBI for being involved with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Using rare police department mug shots and group photographs, the book transports readers through the dark side of Prohibition-era Detroit history.