Get a taste of New York's underworld by seeing where mobsters lived,
worked, ate, played, and died. From the Bowery Boys and the Five Points
Gang through the rise of the Jewish "Kosher Nostra" and the ascendance
of the Italian Mafia, mobsters have played a major role in the city's
history, lurking just around the corner or inside that nondescript
building. Bill "the Butcher" Poole, Paul Kelly, Monk Eastman, "Lucky"
Luciano, Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky, Mickey Spillane, John Gotti--each
held sway over New York neighborhoods that nurtured them and gave them
power. As families and factions fought for control, the city became a
backdrop for crime scenes, the rackets spreading after World War II to
docks, airports, food markets, and garment districts. The streets of
Brooklyn, swamps of Staten Island, and vacant lots near LaGuardia
Airport hosted assassinations and hasty burials for the unlucky. The
bloodlettings, arrests, and trials became front-page fodder for tabloids
that thrived on covering Mulberry Street. Chinese, Russian, and Greek
mobsters rose to prominence and wrought bloody havoc as well. Each of
the book's five sections--one for each borough--traces criminal
activities and area exploits from the nineteenth century to now.
Everyone knows about Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy, but now you
can find Scarpato's restaurant in Coney Island where Joe Masseria was
killed by henchmen of Salvatore Maranzano, who in turn died in a Park
Avenue office building at the hands of "Lucky" Luciano a few months
later. From the Bronx to Brighton Beach, from New Springville to Ozone
Park, here is a comprehensive, on-the-ground guide to mob life in the
Rotten Apple.
