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The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
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71/99
Critics
32/99
Readers
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Scholars
90/99
Rating
52/99
Volume
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Rating
51/99
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About This Book
The harrowing tale of an immigrant underworld, a secret vice squad, and the rise of organized crime. In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands. Worried about the anti-immigration lobby and the uncertain future of Jewish Americans, the uptowners marshalled a strictly off-the-books vice squad led by an ambitious young reformer. The squad, known as the Incorruptibles, took the fight to the heart of crime in the city, waging war on the sin they saw as threatening the future of their community. Their efforts, however, led to unforeseen consequences in the form of a new mobster class who realized, in the country's burgeoning reform efforts, unprecedented opportunities to amass power. In this mesmerizing and atmospheric account, drawn from never-before-seen sources and peopled with unforgettable characters, Dan Slater tells an epic and often brutal saga of crime and redemption, exhuming a buried history that shaped our modern world.
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Reviews
"Write[s] in a breezy, fast-paced style."
"Slater...has produced a deeply researched and fluidly written chronicle ..."
"New York City's East Side at the turn of the 20th century comes vibrantly alive ..."
"The author yields not just a gripping crime story—though it certainly is that—but also a richly detailed, informal social history of New York between the Gilded Age and the Jazz Age that, apart from its scholarly rigor, is also highly readable."
"Slater's meticulously researched history is rich in background and beyond compelling."
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