Tough Jews

New York: Simon & Schuster BOOK: Remainder Mark; Corners, Spine, Boards Bumped; Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Edges Lightly Soiled; Slight Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Repaired; Lightly Creased; Lightly Chipped; Slight Yellowing Due to Age; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams. BOOK NUMBER: 04982450. DESIGNED BY: Mspace. JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY: Culver Pictures. JACKET DESIGN BY: Marc Cohen. CONTENTS: Chapter 1 Nate 'n' Al's; Chapter 2 Abe and Buggsy; Chapter 3 The Moderns; Chapter 4 War in Brownsville; Chapter 5 Delegates at Large; Chapter 6 Corners; Chapter 7 On the Lam; Chapter 8 Dead or Out of Town; Chapter 9 The Warriors; Epilogue Nate 'n' Al's; A Note on Sources; Bibliography; Index. SYNOPSIS: Back in the twenties and thirties in Brooklyn, there lived a breed of men who now e3xist only in legend and in the memories of a few oldtimers. These men were Jewish gangsters, fearless thugs who worked for their nicknames: Buggsy Goldstein, Kid Twist Reles, Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Growing up in Brownsville, they made their way from street fights to underworld power, becoming the execution squad for a national crime syndicate. They were known as Murder Inc., a corporation dealing in death, which did for organized crime what Henry Ford did for the automobile. Tough Jews is the first in-depth portrait of these men, a thrilling glimpse of street-level thugs, the muscle that made possible the success of gangster statesmen such as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano. Never before have these men been handled with such wit, a clear, comic eye that sees beyond the blood to encounter each gangster's matzo-ball heart. For Rich Cohen, who grew up in suburban Illinois in the 1980s taunted by the stereotype of Jews as book-reading, college-attending rule followers, the very idea of the Jewish gangster was a relief. The words "Jewish gangster" seemed to suggest an alternative, a future shot full of holes. For once, a Jew in jail did not have to mean white collar crime. Cohen learned about the gangsters from his father, Herb Cohen, author of You Can Negotiate Anything, and his father's friends from the old neighborhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, including talk-show host Larry King. At breakfast, after touching on Jewish basketball stars and boxers, these men would speak of Jewish gangsters, corner boys who took grief from no one. Cohen, taken with his father's fixation on these elusive figures, has gone back--interviewing survivors, prosecutors, and relatives, wading through police records and court reports--to excavate the real stories behind the legends, the rise, the fall, and the mystery: Where did the tough Jews go? Rich Cohen's writing career began at The New Yorker magazine, where, soon after he graduated from college, he wrote stories for "Talk of the Town." For the past several years he has been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he has done everything from playing tennis with Andre Agassi in Australia t traveling the South with the Rolling Stones. A graduate of Tulane University, Rich Cohen has written for The New Yorker, The New York Observer, The New York Times, New York magazine, Details, and Spy. He was born and raised in Illinois, is now a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and lives in New York City. This is his first book.. First Edition 1st Printing. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Remainder.