Synopses & Reviews
Back in the twenties and thirties in Brooklyn, there lived a breed of men who now exist only in legend and in the memories of a few old-timers. These men were Jewish gangsters, fearless thugs who worked for their nicknames: Buggsy Goldstein, Kid Twist Reles, Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Growing up in Brownsville, they made their way from street fights to underworld power, becoming the execution squad for a national crime syndicate. They were known as Murder Inc., a corporation dealing in death, which did for organized crime what Henry Ford did for the automobile. "Tough Jews" is the first in-depth portrait of these men, a thrilling glimpse of street-level thugs, the muscle that made possible the success of gangster statesmen such as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano. Never before have these men been handled with such wit, a clear, comic eye that sees beyond the blood to encounter each gangster's matzo-ball heart.
For Rich Cohen, who grew up in suburban Illinois in the 1980s taunted by the stereotype of Jews as book-reading, college-attending rule followers, the very idea of the Jewish gangster was a relief. The words "Jewish gangster" seemed to suggest an alternative, a future shot full of holes. For once, a Jew in jail did not have to mean white collar crime.
Cohen learned about the gangsters from his father, Herb Cohen, author of "You Can Negotiate Anything", and his father's friends from the old neighborhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, including talk-show host Larry King. At breakfast, after touching on Jewish basketball stars and boxers, these men would speak of Jewish gangsters, corner boys who took grief from no one. Cohen, taken with his father's fixation on these elusive figures, has gone back-- interviewing survivors, prosecutors, and relatives, wading through police records and court reports-- to excavate the real stories behind the legends, the rise, the fall, and the mystery: "Where did the tough Jews go?"
Synopsis
To author Rich Cohen, images of Jews involved in violent organized crime were entirely at odds with what he and his generation were taught was the dominant Jewish stereotype: intellectualism and professional legitimacy, not physical aggressiveness and lawlessness.
Cohen's "Tough Jews" is the first in-depth examination of the Jewish underworld to chronicle the lives of the Jews from working-class families who took to the streets in search of illegitimate authority. The focus of Cohen's narrative is the generation of Jewish gangsters that controlled the neighborhoods in New York City where his father, and his father's childhood friend Larry King, came of age. These mobsters -- Louis Lepke, Meyer Lansky Dutch Schultz, and their soldiers on every side street, candy store, and front stoop -- lived out a legacy of brutality and criminality rarely inspected with such acuity and wit as in "Tough Jews".
With stories gleaned from oral histories, a comprehensive review of government documents, and dogged excavation of facts, Cohen reveals the machinery of Jewish organized crime in the early 20th century from the gangster's point of view, bringing to life an enigmatic figure in the history of American crime.
About the Author
Rich Cohen is a graduate of Tulane University. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Observer, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Details, and Spy. He is now a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Nate n'Al's
Chapter 2: Abe and Buggsy
Chapter 3: The Moderns
Chapter 4: War in Brownsville
Chapter 5: Delegates at Large
Chapter 6: Corners
Chapter 7: On the Lam
Chapter 8: Dead or Out of Town
Chapter 9: The Warriors
Epilogue: Nate 'n'Al's
A Note on Sources
Bibliography
Index