The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America

By Albert Fried

Book Overview

Albert Fried recalls the rise and fail of an underworld culture that bred some of America's most infamous racketeers, bootleggers, gamblers, and professional killers, spawned by a culture of vice and criminality on New York's Lower East Side and similar environments in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Newark, and Philadelphia. The author adds an important dimension to this story as he discusses the Italian gangs that teamed up with their Jewish counterparts to form multicultural syndicates. The careers of such high-profile figures as Meyer Lansky, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and "Dutch" Schultz demonstrate how these gangsters passed from early manhood to old age, marketed illicit goods and services after the repeal of Prohibition, improved their system of mutual cooperation and self-governance, and grew to resemble modern business entrepreneurs. A new afterword brings to a close the careers of the Jewish gangsters and discusses how their image is addressed in selected books since the 1980s. Fried also examines the impact of films such as The Godfather series, Once Upon a Time in America, and Bugsy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231096836
• ISBN13: 9780231096836
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Masterpiece

This is an excellent academic account--and, at the same time, most enjoyable reading for a scholarly work--on ethnic succession in organized crime. Italian and Jewish gangsters supplanted German and Irish hoods during Prohibition. The Italians outlasted the Jews and are now being supplanted by other ethnic groups. Working largely from FBI files and contemporary news accounts, Fried examines the why and how of it all, tracing Jewish organized crime from the early New York street gangs through such powerhouse mobsters as Waxey Gordon, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the "Cleveland Four," headed by Moe Dalitz who later migrated to Las Vegas, and the legendary "Chairman of the Board," Meyer Lansky. One wishes there had been more emphasis on other Jewish mobsters such as Dutch Schultz, Jake Guzik, Charlie Birger, Kid Cann, and the Purple Gang but the rise and fall of the Jewish gangster seems to have been much the same story anyway throughout America and I don't think it's been told better anywhere.

The real New York Counter-culture

Anyone who has looked into American 20th century "Leftist" urban politics has undoubtedly run across Albert Fried's name before. In this wonderful history, he expertly tells the story of emerging urban Jewish culture at the turn of the century and of how one segment of this culture then quickly evolved to succeed in the wilderness of the Lower East Side, Manhattan. All of the major gangster figures are covered in detail and a number of "lesser known" gangsters (to those who are not as expert in this subject) are revealed to have been important local figures in their day, as well as meaningful players in a larger coherent socio-political story. I emphasize "story" because to me that is what this book really is: Fried clearly has a passion for his subject and his city and as a result, the book reads like a wise Jewish grandfather passing down his legends. Anyone with an interest in gangster culture, its relationship to local, state and national politics, the history of New York City, and/or the history of American Judaism as developed through the New York Secular movement MUST read this book!

Gripping, elegantly written.

This is a gripping, elegantly written account of some of the most colorfully horrible people in our nation's history.