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The Incorruptibles
A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
Description
This harrowing tale of early twentieth century New York reveals the true stories 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.
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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Praise
"Dan Slater has produced a deeply researched and fluidly written chronicle of the ruthless Jewish gangsters who preyed on their own people and of the drive, spearheaded by the city’s newly rich Jewish philanthropists, to eradicate the scourge...a useful corrective to the conventional picture of what life was like on those mean streets"
—Edward Kosner, Wall Street Journal
"Exuberant...Slater write[s] in a breezy, fast-paced style. [He] revels in the Dickensian details of the demimonde—the colorful lingo, intricate professional techniques and social snobberies of the criminal classes—looping through decades of political and economic history that spills over into chatty footnotes."
—Debby Applegate, New York Times
“Bookended by the notorious killings of Herman Rosenthal in 1912 and Arnold Rothstein in 1928, both of which involved the double-dealing of police and political figures, Slater's meticulously researched history is rich in background and beyond compelling."
—Phillip Zozzaro, Booklist
"History readers will be riveted by this vivid account of the gangs, gamblers, and goons on Grand Street, and the ragtag squad who set out to stop them."
—Amazon Book Review, Editors' Pick for Best History Book
"The Incorruptibles is a compelling portrait of a time, not unlike our own, when crime in American cities drives ethnic polarization and a political demand for restricting immigration. It also suggests that there is a way through if enough honest actors expend enough effort working to bust the problem rather than denying it."
—Diane Scharper, Washington Examiner
"A true story that reads like a sweeping historical novel filled with dynamic personalities and surprising details."
—Jeff Somers, BookBub
"Slater takes readers on an atmospheric journey through the lens of Jewish men who ran gambling dens, prostitute rings and crime syndicates in New York City during the Gilded Age, capturing the extreme ambition of these larger-than-life characters, as well as the inequality and antisemitism of the era."
—Wilson Young, New York Times "19 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer"
"Vibrant...a singularly worthy read...a compelling crime story, colorful history and an ominous warning about antisemitism."
—Priscilla Kipp, BookPage (starred review)
"A rollicking account...Slater brings the reader fully into the New York City of the 1910s...His act of historical reanimation is both urgent and entertaining, one that uncovers, but does not moralize about, a shadowy world of avarice and naked ambition that still made room for the possibility of hope. It’s a harbinger of how America would transform over the next century and beyond."
—Sarah Weinman, Air Mail
"A riveting account . . . Slater 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. A grand evocation of the Gotham of gangsters, crooked cops, 'beefsteak dungeons,' and nativists versus newcomers."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“An extraordinary glimpse into old New York’s cauldron of crime, labor, and the Jewish immigrant experience—Slater draws on the recollections of reformers and gangsters alike to put you right in the rooms and the alleyways.”
—Paul Collins, author of The Murder of The Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars and Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard
“What a great book! The Incorruptibles is a true-crime page-turner that I could not put down. Even those who think they know a lot about the history of organized crime in New York City will know so much more after finishing this fascinating book.”
—Tyler Anbinder, author of Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York
“If you want to visit New York’s Lower East Side of our great-grandparents, the tenement world of sweatshops, hop joints, and Jewish gangsters, you can build a time machine and set the destination to 1912, or read Dan Slater's wonderful book The Incorruptibles. In prose nearly hallucinatory in its clarity, Dan Slater dramatizes the uptown/ downtown battle that created our modern world as surely as the Spanish American War did. It's nothing but characters, this book—episodes and dazzling excitement."
—Rich Cohen, author of When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season and Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams
—Rich Cohen, author of When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season and Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams
“TheIncorruptibles is a story of the underworld, of reformers bent on wiping it out, and of unintended consequences. It's a story of Jewish-America at the turn of the last century that resonates in today's America. It's not just an important book, but the kind where, as you near the end, you'll parcel out pages so as not to finish too fast.”
—Larry Tye, author of Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend and Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon
“If you take your reading pleasures with a shot of unwholesome and a glass of irredeemable, then Dan Slater’s hurly burly new account of old-time New York fixers, bent pols, middle pocket cake eaters, East Side Joan of Arcs, rods, rummys, Abe the Just Rothstein and his racketeer son Arnold is just the pipe for you.”
—Nicholas Dawidoff, author of The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice and the American City and The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg