The Incorruptibles

June 1, 2024
Early twentieth-century New York City was a hub of transformation and immigration. As people from Europe settled in Manhattan and outlying areas and found jobs, many hardworking immigrants were explotied by unscrupulous business owners. A select few endeavored to make money through illegitimate means and joined the ranks of the growing criminal underworld. Meanwhile, as alliances formed between the crooked political machine of Tammany Hall and racketeers like Arnold Rothstein, crime became organized even as the Progressive Era area flourished with ideas for business and social reform. Private investigator Abe Schoenfeld and lawyer Harry Neuberger began working together to explore police reform, investigating vices and abuses within the NYPD. Tackling such entrenched corruption, though, would face many setbacks. 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 (Wolf Boys, 2016) meticulously researched history is rich in background and beyond compelling.

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Starred review from June 15, 2024
A riveting account of the corrupt landscape of early-20th-century New York City. Well before the Five Families put their mark on organized crime, Jewish immigrants controlled the trade, exemplified by gambler and crime lord Arnold Rothstein. He started off small, building an empire piece by piece on the East Side, mostly settled by recently arrived Eastern European Jews. So did Tammany politician "Big Tim" Sullivan, who traded his upwardly mobile Irish constituency for the Jewish newcomers. At the time, the city was rife with prostitution, gambling, labor agitation, and rising leftist politics. "Ever since the Eastern European Jews began arriving," writes Slater, author of Wolf Boys, "the German Jews worried that these unwashed co-religionists, with their orthodox religiosity and radical politics, would undermine their own hard-won social respectability with the ruling patrician class." Given that Tammany and the New York police force were thoroughly corrupt, the Germans, financier Jacob Schiff among them, pushed the relatively clean mayor to found a Jewish-led vice squad: the Incorruptibles of the title. As Rothstein, later to be infamous for the 1919 Black Sox baseball scandal, drifted deeper into the drug trade and other illicit activities--not least the murder of a rival--the mayor and vice squad leader "debated constitutional issues surrounding policing, such as warrantless raids, undercover stings, and bridging wires." Slater's narrative, full of twists and turns, is populated by characters from Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano to Louis Brandeis and Damon Runyon. 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. A grand evocation of the Gotham of gangsters, crooked cops, "beefsteak dungeons," and nativists versus newcomers.

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October 18, 2024

In a wide-ranging history of poverty, corruption, and reform in early 20th-century New York, Slater (Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel) evokes a world filled with gambling outfits, unions, corrupt local governments, and brothels. Many of these crime syndicates were helmed by recent Jewish immigrants from central and eastern European countries who ruled these industries until after Prohibition. Some readers may find it difficult to keep track of the numerous personalities discussed in the book, but Slater ultimately focuses on two. One is Arnold Rothstein, a gifted oddsmaker who became one of New York's top fixers, believed to be behind the Black Sox Scandal in 1919. Years before that, he reportedly ruled the streets of the Lower East Side with violence. The other is Abe Shoenfeld, a self-taught and reform-minded vigilante who first worked undercover and then publicly for an uptown German Jewish organization that combatted vice. Slater doesn't shy away from details of the violent behavior, double-crossing, and depravity characterizing the period. VERDICT Slater's fleet, detail-filled narrative brings Rothstein and Shoenfeld to the forefront. This book will entertain readers of American history, Jewish history, and true crime.--Jessica Epstein

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