Tough Jews

December 2, 1997
Journalist Cohen on Jewish organized crime in 20th-century America.

March 15, 1998
For younger Jews, Jewish gangsters are as alien and as long extinct a species as dinosaurs, but for some of their elders, many of whom survived pogroms in Europe and Russia and vowed never to be victims again, Jewish wise guys were heroes. Cohen examines the origins and gestalt of the Jewish underworld in colorful and often wry accounts of the lives of such major figures as Louis Lepke (once considered "the most dangerous criminal in America" by J. Edgar Hoover), Arthur Rothstein ("probably the first major American drug dealer"), and Meyer Lansky, probing their interactions with the Italian mob and illuminating the mind-set that has ensured that "gangsterism would at last become Americanism--as much about remaking yourself as about striking it rich." His anecdotal chronicle is based on his own family's observations of gangster life in Bensonhurst during the years leading up to the Depression and on through the war. Cohen doesn't glamorize or condone the violence of these tough Jews, but he sure does admire their moxie. ((Reviewed March 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)