About this item
The harrowing tale 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.
About the Author
Dan Slater has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, New York, Fast Company, Texas Monthly, Men's Health, and GQ. His last book, Wolf Boys, was voted a Best Book of 2016 by the Chicago Public Library and is soon to be a major motion picture from Sony and Antoine Fuqua. The Officer & the Entrepreneur is in development for a TV series from Oscar-winning producer Cathy Schulman. For more information, visit @bydanslater at Twitter or www.bydanslater.com.
