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.
Exuberant ... Write[s] in a breezy, fast-paced style. [He] revel[s] 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.
Slater...has produced a deeply researched and fluidly written chronicle ... A useful corrective to the conventional picture of what life was like on those mean streets.
is book is, as one would expect from a journalist, colorful and dramatic. It’s written in a light and folksy manner that brims with historiographical clichés, invented dialogue, and memorable personalities ... While Slater’s book is true, it does not explore how Jews’ criminal behavior was influenced by culture and religion, nor does it compare city leaders’ response to crime by Jews to crime committed by other ethnic groups. Some readers might be disappointed by its failure to examine the larger economic and social factors that led to Jews’ participation in crime. However, The Incorruptibles is sure to attract a wide audience.
