The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York

by C. Alexander Hortis, James B. Jacobs (Foreword by)

Overview

Forget what you think you know about the Mafia. After reading this book, even life-long mob aficionados will have a new perspective on organized crime.Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s. Based on exhaustive research of archives and secret files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, author and attorney C. Alexander Hortis draws on the deepest collection of primary sources, many newly discovered, of any history of the modern mob.Shattering myths, Hortis reveals how Cosa Nostra actually obtained power at the inception. The author goes beyond conventional who-shot-who mob stories, providing answers to fresh questions such as: * Why did the Sicilian gangs come out on top of the criminal underworld? * Can economics explain how the Mafia families operated? * What was the Mafia's real role in the drug trade? * Why was Cosa Nostra involved in gay bars in New York since the 1930s? Drawing on an unprecedented array of primary sources, The Mob and the City is the most thorough and authentic history of the Mafia's rise to power in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633886087
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/15/2021
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	601,834
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

C. Alexander Hortis, JD, is an attorney specializing in commercial litigation and constitutional law. He has published articles on the Mafia in The Informer: The History of American Crime & Law Enforcement and in New York Law School Law Review.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The Godfather vs. New York History

When the cell doors clanged shut on Giuseppe Morello, Ignazio Lupo, and dozens of their men in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1910, their gang should have just dissolved into the streets of New York City. The Morello Family was just another struggling band of rogues, its modest numbers cut in half by convictions for a reckless counterfeiting scheme that had drawn the ire of the United States Secret Service. The Sicilians were small fish in New York’s underworld. The Irish mob enjoyed natural ties to the docks and police force; African-American gangsters held sway in black Harlem and San Juan Hill; and Jewish organized crime was far stronger throughout the city.

Then, improbably, the mafiosi reconstituted themselves and returned with a vengeance. By the late 1930s, they evolved into the Cosa Nostra (“Our Thing”), the top syndicate in Gotham. By the 1950s, the Mafia families had grown to include two thousand “made men” and thousands more criminal associates entrenched throughout the economy, neighborhoods, and nightlife of New York.

The remarkable story of how the modern Mafia actually took power on the streets of New York remains largely hidden. Mob books gloss over this formative era with superficial “rise of ” chapters that rehash dubious anecdotes from secondhand sources about the purported machinations of the bosses. Telling the Cosa Nostra’s early history, however, requires digging up primary sources in archives. Moreover, the narrow obsession with the bosses (the “godfathers”) neglects the soldiers (the “button men”) who ran the rackets on the streets.

Mob history has been blurred by eighty years of Mafia mythology as well. America’s greatest filmmakers have created indelible images of the mob, from Howard Hawks’s Scarface to Martin Scorsese’s gangster epics to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy. They have been joined by “prestige dramas” such as The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire. Mafiosi themselves have influenced the narrative. Al Capone in the 1920s, Joey Gallo in the 1970s, and John Gotti in the 1980s all manipulated the media. In his 1983 autobiography A Man of Honor (a bestseller that’s still in print), Joseph Bonanno painted a romanticized portrait of himself as a benevolent “Father” who fought Americanized mobsters trying to pervert his noble “Tradition.”

This is the first full-length book devoted specifically to uncovering the hidden history of how the street soldiers of the modern Mafia captured New York City during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. While discussing the Prohibition era of the 1920s, this book argues that the key formative decade for the Mafia was actually the 1930s. The book covers such hot topics as: Who actually founded the modern Mafia? Who shot Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton barbershop? And who exactly was present at the 1957 meeting of the Mafia in the town of Apalachin, New York? At the same time, the book goes beyond traditional mob topics as well. It not only documents who shot who, but explores how and why the Cosa Nostra emerged in Gotham.

This revisionist history cuts through thickets of Mafia mythology with a machete of primary sources. It draws on the deepest collection of primary sources—many newly discovered—of any history of the modern Mafia. The primary sources include, among others, trial transcripts, investigative hearings, mayoral papers, personal memoirs, labor union records, and surveillance reports of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. These are complimented by internal files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the National Archives or obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. All of the quoted conversations in these pages are real and taken directly from primary sources. I supply extensive endnotes that allow readers to see the evidence for each chapter. This is an authentic history.

Contrary to its image, the Mafia was not primarily the product of Sicilian intrigue among the godfathers. As we will see, mob bosses had limited control over these lucrative crime franchises. Rather, the Cosa Nostra was forged by the street soldiers as they adapted to the unique conditions of twentieth-century Gotham. They captured New York City by becoming part of it. 

This approach places the Mafia squarely back into New York history. It shows how the infamous “French Connection” heroin case was merely an offshoot of Mafia narcotics trafficking dating back to the dawn of America’s drug war. It describes how the Cosa Nostra rode labor unions and business cartels to power during the New Deal. It shows why the Stonewall riots of 1969 were the culmination of the mob-run system of gay bars that dated to the 1930s. By replacing gauzy myths with historical evidence, we can see this extraordinary crime syndicate in a whole new light.

Table of Contents

Foreword Dr. James B. Jacobs 7

Acknowledgments 9

Introduction: The Godfather vs. New York History 11

Part 1 New York City Through Prohibition

1 A City Built for the Mob 17

2 Prohibition and the Rise of the Sicilians 41

Part 2 Taking Gotham: The 1930s and 40's

3 The Mafia Rebellion of 1928-1931 and the Fall of the Boss of Bosses 71

4 The Racketeer Cometh: How the Mob Infiltrated Labor Unions 99

5 The Mafia and the Drug Trade 125

6 The Mob Nightlife 155

Part 3 The Mobbed-Up Metropolis: The 1950s

7 The Lives of Wiseguys 177

8 Mouthpieces for the Mob: Crooked Cops, Mob Lawyers, and Director Hoover 207

9 The Assassinations of 1957 225

10 Apalachin 249

Conclusion: New York's Mafia 283

Notes 285

Select Bibliography 357

Index 361

Editorial Reviews

"In his rich, well-researched first book, Hortis details the rise of the Mafia while debunking numerous myths.. .. If there's a better book on the early history of Cosa Nostra in America, I haven't seen it.” —Jerry Capeci, Gang Land News, coauthor of Mob Boss“An exhaustively researched, yet highly readable history of exactly how the Italian Mafia became the dominant organized crime group in New York City for most of the twentieth century. Using newly uncovered documents and primary sources, Hortis cuts through many of the myths that surround the Mafia and offers new angles and insight on a subject that continues to fascinate researchers and readers. The Mob and The City is an exciting addition to the Mafia true-crime canon.”—Scott M. Deitche, author of The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr.“Hortis demolishes what we thought we knew about the Mob...and builds a new history upon a solid foundation of exclusive documentary evidence and superb insight.... Essential reading for all who seek to truly understand the phenomenon of organized crime in America's most populous city.”—Thomas Hunt, editor of Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement“An outstanding work of scholarship that highlights misinformation and myth attached to the history of the Mafia in New York.” —Dr. Howard Abadinsky, professor of criminal justice, St. John's University, author of Organized Crime“Much has been made of the Cosa Nostra being a national crime organization. And while that was certainly true, New York was always its headquarters—the only city with more than one resident family (there are five) and, because of that, the birthplace of the Commission. The Mob and the City provides both an overview and an analysis of how that came to be, and it offers an interesting alternative to mob boss Joe Bonanno's generally accepted version of Cosa Nostra's origins. Lucid and thoughtful, it is well worth reading.”—Ronald Goldstock, commissioner of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor and former director of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force

From the Publisher

03/24/2014
Though this book is far from the first to claim that the mob did not deal drugs or that its members didn’t snitch on each other, attorney Hortis does offer a detailed look at the history of La Costra Nostra in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. However, the writing and organization of material is far inferior to Selwyn Raab’s Five Families, which took the story to the near-present. Intriguing anecdotes presented here include identification of perhaps the earliest mob turncoat, “Millionaire Charlie” Matranga, who testified against his New Orleans colleagues in the 1890s. Facts post-dating Apalachin (the infamous 1957 mob summit in upstate New York), where the narrative ends, can be confusing, especially since the book lacks even a short epilogue to catch readers up on major developments in the American Mafia, and its prosecution, in the last 50 years. Agent: Scott Mendel, Mendel Media Group. (May)

Publishers Weekly