In 1850, Fredericka Mandelbaum emigrated to New York from Germany and worked as a rag peddler on the streets of the Lower East Side. By the 1870s she was a widow with four children, a popular society hostess, and a philanthropist. What enabled a woman on the margins of nineteenth-century American life to ascend from tenement poverty to immense wealth?
Fox... excels at telling a story that is rich in historical detail ... The tale of her life as a brazen and shrewd crime boss, and then her escape and life as a fugitive, is enthrallingly cinematic, and Fox captures every detail.
Fox... a seasoned journalist and author, [writes] in a breezy, fast-paced style ... The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum serves up a platonic ideal of the criminal mastermind.
Ms. Fox has produced a vivid portrait of Mandelbaum in this rich recounting of her life and times. Best-known as an obituary writer for the New York Times, Ms. Fox knows how to synthesize facts and shape a story ... Sometimes, the extraneous information threatens to swamp the Mandelbaum story, especially as there are also copious footnotes on nearly every page. But Ms. Fox is too skilled a writer to slow the momentum for long.
