Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster
Americans have a tendency to romanticize some of our worst criminals. Thankfully, Newark avoids that in his absorbing and well-researched biography of one of our most interesting gangsters. For the most part, he confirms that Luciano was a murderous thug. Still, as Newark illustrates, he was a cut above most of his fellow hoods in terms of intelligence and his understanding of the American political and economic landscape. Although he was born in Sicily, Luciano was Americanized in that he had contempt for most of the older, Sicilian-born Moustache Petes and their pretensions to codes of honor and disdain for working with Jewish mobsters. Perhaps it was his streak of independence that allowed Luciano to survive the viscious New York Mob wars of the 1920s and 1930s, but it also left him particularly vulnerable to Thomas Dewey’s crusade against the Mob. Newark’s recounting of his later career after his deportation is interesting and provocative. He clearly worked for the U.S. government, but his activities were so murky that it is unclear who was being manipulated. --Jay Freeman