Showing posts with label Lower East Side. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lower East Side. Show all posts

02 October 2023

Gangsters of Lower East Side

Informer's October 2023 issue, entitled "Gangsters of New York's Lower East Side," includes twelve feature articles and eleven sidebars related to the gangland history of the area known as the "greatest breeding ground for gunmen and racketeers... this country has ever seen." The issue also includes several articles on other subjects.

Magazine (left) and book covers.

Thomas Hunt, Justin Cascio, Patrick Downey, Michael O'Haire, Steve Turner and Matt Ghiglieri contributed articles.

The Informer issue is available in seven formats. Print magazine and electronic (PDF) magazine editions can be obtained through the MagCloud service. Hardcover and paperback print book and Kindle ebook formats are listed with Amazon. EPUB ebook and abridged audiobook editions are sold through Google Play Books.

Lower East Side history articles focus on the following subjects:

  • The Whyos gang.
  • Bandits' Roost photograph.
  • John McGurk's "Suicide Hall." (Sidebar on gambling.)
  • Monk Eastman. (Sidebar on Eastman's killer.)
  • Mafia boss Nicola Taranto. (Sidebar on rumored Mafia headquarter on Mott Street.)
  • Paul "Kelly" Vaccarelli. (Sidebars on Irving Berlin, Sirocco and Tricker, Torrio and Vannella, Bellantonis of Broome Street.)
  • Chinatown Tong Wars.
  • Frank Lanza businesses.
  • "Johnny Spanish" Mistretta
  • Meyer Lansky's youth. (Sidebars on Mutty, Lucy and Kitty; Dutch Goldberg; Gurrah, Lepke, Curly and Bugsy; Red Levine.)
  • Killings on Second Avenue.
  • Narcotics racketeers.

The issue is illustrated with numerous photographs and a dozen maps. It runs 174 pages (including covers and ads) in magazine format and 370+ pages in print book format. The auto-narrated audiobook omits some material unrelated to the main subject. It runs about eight and a half hours. This is the thirty-third issue of the journal, first published in 2008.

For more information, visit Informer's website.

04 January 2023

'Uncle Charlie' and the Jewish Mob

In Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz, author Alan Geik tells of his family's connection to noteworthy Jewish-American gangsters of New York City. These eastern European immigrant outlaws, whose adventures were preserved through many years of Geik kitchen table discussions, became the foundation of a uniquely American organized crime network.

Determined to escape by any means the poverty and congestion of their Lower East Side slum neighborhood, when merely boys they turned to crime and combined into Prohibition Era gangs. They graduated from petty offenses to bootlegging and hijacking to labor racketeering and beyond. Eventually, they branched out into casino gambling, stolen goods fencing and professional murder. Along the way, they violently tangled with each other, with outside gangs, with strikebreakers and with American Nazis. Ultimately, they entered into a cooperative agreement with Italian-American gangsters and formed a monopolistic rackets syndicate, an entity Geik describes as "the biggest cash flow business in American history - organized crime."

Workman
The "Uncle Charlie" of the book title, refers to Charles "Charlie the Bug" Workman, a professional assassin. Linked with rackets boss Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and with Brooklyn killers later referred to as "Murder, Inc.," Workman eventually served twenty-three years of a life prison sentence for the October 23, 1935, murder of Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer. Workman was released from prison in March of 1964. Geik reports that his own first conversation with the man he knew as "Uncle Charlie" occurred about that time.

While the title focuses on Workman and the earliest chapters are confined to the New York area, the book is more wide-ranging. Geik discusses crime figures Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles and others. And he ventures out to such places as Cleveland, Las Vegas and Havana.

Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz: The Jewish Mob: A Family Affair was released in November 2022. It is available in paperback (284 pages) and Kindle ebook editions through Amazon.com.