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The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York Paperback – February 15, 2020

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

4.3 230 ratings

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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.

Print length

382 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Prometheus
Publication date

February 15, 2020
Dimensions

6 x 0.96 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1633886085
ISBN-13

978-1633886087
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Editorial Reviews

Review

""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

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prometheus (February 15, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 382 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1633886085
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1633886087
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.96 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #862,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,257 in Organized Crime True Accounts
- #2,644 in Criminology (Books)
- #14,171 in U.S. State & Local History

Customer Reviews:
4.3 230 ratings

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Alex Hortis
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C. Alexander Hortis
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Alex Hortis has written extensively on organized crime and public corruption. His articles have been published in New York University Law Review, New York Law School Law Review, and The Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement.
His article on the Mafia's cartel in New York's waste hauling industry was reprinted in Federico Varese ed., Organized Crime: Critical Concepts in Criminology, Vol. IV (New York: Routledge, 2010).
To learn more, visit http://www.alexhortis.com.
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4.3 out of 5

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Lee Freese

The best book on American organized crime there is.

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2023

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I've probably read more than four dozen books on the Mafia. This is the best of them all. I learned more from The Mob and the City than from any of the others. The author, C. Alexander Hortis, is a lawyer who presents a history of the development of the Mafia in New York City in the twentieth century. He does it with a lawyer's appreciation for the differences between fact, hearsay, rumor, speculation, and fiction.

The result is a debunking of many myths about the Mafia that have survived for decades. Mafioso have been drug pushers almost from the beginning, all the while telling each other they were not. They did not rigidly follow their code of silence (Omerta); many of them turned state's evidence when the jig was up, Individual members are not required to murder someone as a ticket to membership, contrary to what all the movies tell us. The biggest myth of all is that Mafioso are men of honor and a band of brothers. To the contrary, they are cutthroats who will turn on each other if a good opportunity presents itself.

As with other books on the subject, Hortis emphasizes that Mafia success depended very much on the corruption of police and judges. Unlike other books, Hortis fully explains the Mafia's penetration of labor unions. Where other Mafia books just mention this, Hortis explains it in detail. Much of this will be new to many readers.

Hortis rigorously researched this book, utilizing primary sources that other writers could have exploited but didn't. His principal argument is that New York City was perfectly suited to the emergence and flowering of the Mafia in the early twentieth century. He does not spend much time explaining why it is weaker today than ever before. I wish he had. I wish he would.

The most delightful chapter is when Hortis provides a detailed description of the 1957 Apalachin conference which, once the police descended upon it, turned Mafia bigwigs into buffoons. The presentation of this is downright funny, and more thorough than any other I've seen.

Smoothy written, The Mob and the City is an easy read and (pardon the cliche) a must read for anyone interested in American organized crime.

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Kevin_Schmidt

Thinking man's history of the Mafia with lots of new stuff

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2014

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This was a surprisingly refreshing, thoughtful history of the Mafia. This is NOT your typical "Vince-shot-Tony" pulp mob history. Rather, the book explains how Joe Masseria, Lucky Luciano and the rest of the gang fits into the long-term trajectory of New York.

The amount of new information was impressive. Personally, I've never read a Mafia book that quotes the actual words of Joseph "Joe the Boss" Masseria, or detailed the Mafia's major role in gay bars, or try to undertake a fresh "murder investigation" of the killer of Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia. There was even a note from J. Edgar Hoover admitting he was wrong about the Mafia.

The book is solidly researched and it turns up lots of new stuff.

5 people found this helpful

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John B. Horton

A wonderful revisionist history of the Mafia and how it both shaped and was shaped by New York City

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2015

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If you're interested in a reading a great book that outlines how the Mafia in New York City wound up developing in New York City over the course of several generations, starting in the late 19th Century up till the late 20th Century, then this is the book for you. In particular Hortis examines why the American Mafia developed in New York as opposed to other cities why it lasted as long as it did and how members of this secret society managed to shape the narrative as to how they were viewed as the public finally started to realize they existed. He goes into great detail to show how the Mafioso took advantage not only of New York's congestion, government, it's byzantine legal system, and even, surprisingly to this reviewer, it's geography. Starting from way back they realized that when businesses exist on an island with a very limited number of entrances if you can control the shipping and the ports that the businesses need to survive you control them. Moreover, one reoccurring theme seems to be that whenever the government tried to regulate behavior, from prohibition, to taxes on cigarettes to even gay bars(one of the more fascinating parts of the book is how the laws from the 1930s regulating gay bars led to the mafia control of much of New York City's gay night life and the eventual famous Stonewall rebellion). And yes it does do a revisionist look at the rise of Luciano and questions the common wisdom that Hoover was blackmailed by the Mafia. Hortiss points out that the wisdom seems to have little evidence to back it up. What's more likely is that the Hoover biographers who said Hoover was a really, really bad cop were probably correct and the famous adage "never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence". I highly recommend. On another note, readers who enjoyed the HBO series Boardwalk Empire will enjoy Hortis' comparison of the fictionalized versions of Capone and Luciano to their real-life counterparts.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Rat patrol

If your into the mob scene

Reviewed in Canada on January 28, 2024

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A must read if you are interested in the mob

One person found this helpful

Ellison F

Superb history of the New York Mob

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2020

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Excellent history of how the Italian Mafia developed in New York. The use of primary sources makes this book compelling reading, especially for those interested in the Mafia.

Jane

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 15, 2019

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One of the best books on gangsters
Highly recommended

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