Long before Brooklyn was known as the worldâs hippest neighborhood, it was the deadliest - the seedy, dangerous underbelly of New York City, where mobsters and gangs could commit murder and dump dead bodies without getting caught. This is the real, gritty history the New York mobs in Red Hook, Brooklynâwhere the streets ran red with bloodâby a Mafia survivor who grew up there . . .
Before Brooklynâs peninsula, known as Red Hook, became known for its arts and cultural scene, industrial chic, and luxury yachts, it was a dirty pocket of danger. The Dutch named it âRoode Hoekâ for its red clay cliffs jutting into New York Bay. For centuries, its location was the perfect combination of physical isolation and waterfront vice that created a cocktail of despair, anger, and violence. And then the Mob moved inâŚ
For more than a hundred years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn was Ground Zero for organized crime. Whoever controlled the piers controlled everything. From the infamous Irish gang known as The White Hand at the turn of the century, to the notorious Italian Gallo brothers who ran President Streetâand everything elseâgenerations later, the blood-soaked history of Red Hook is the story of American crime at its most powerful, corrupt, and coldly efficient.
With wit, street lingo, and an insiderâs view, Red Hook sweeps from its Irish Mob to Prohibitionâs ruthless bootleggers, from its infamously polluted waterfront to marauding gangs of juvenile delinquents, drunken longshoremen, vacant lots, rotting tenement buildings, and packs of feral dogs. The perfect setting for corruption and crime, the authors closely examine the peninsulaâs takeover by Italian tough guys who held onto power at the piers for a hundred years, littering the neighborhood with gunfire and dead bodies.
It's all here: the brutal mob hits, bullet storms, and backstabbings of the most colorful cutthroats to ever terrorize the streets. A rogueâs gallery of killers with nicknames like âThe Mad Hatter,â âThe Executioner,â âWild Bill,â and âPeg Leg.â The Brooklyn bar fight that gave Al âScarfaceâ Capone his legendary scars. The godfather of Americaâs first Sicilian crime family whose gruesomely mangled hand could scare men half to death. And, to bring it all home, the authorâs own eyewitness account of multiple shootings growing up as the son of a Mafia bodyguard.
Packed with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafiaâs way of life, and shocking portraits of Americaâs most wanted crime families, Red Hook is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the history of organized crime in America.
Long before Brooklyn was known as the worldâs hippest neighborhood, it was the deadliest - the seedy, dangerous underbelly of New York City, where mobsters and gangs could commit murder and dump dead bodies without getting caught. This is the real, gritty history the New York mobs in Red Hook, Brooklynâwhere the streets ran red with bloodâby a Mafia survivor who grew up there . . .
Before Brooklynâs peninsula, known as Red Hook, became known for its arts and cultural scene, industrial chic, and luxury yachts, it was a dirty pocket of danger. The Dutch named it âRoode Hoekâ for its red clay cliffs jutting into New York Bay. For centuries, its location was the perfect combination of physical isolation and waterfront vice that created a cocktail of despair, anger, and violence. And then the Mob moved inâŚ
For more than a hundred years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn was Ground Zero for organized crime. Whoever controlled the piers controlled everything. From the infamous Irish gang known as The White Hand at the turn of the century, to the notorious Italian Gallo brothers who ran President Streetâand everything elseâgenerations later, the blood-soaked history of Red Hook is the story of American crime at its most powerful, corrupt, and coldly efficient.
With wit, street lingo, and an insiderâs view, Red Hook sweeps from its Irish Mob to Prohibitionâs ruthless bootleggers, from its infamously polluted waterfront to marauding gangs of juvenile delinquents, drunken longshoremen, vacant lots, rotting tenement buildings, and packs of feral dogs. The perfect setting for corruption and crime, the authors closely examine the peninsulaâs takeover by Italian tough guys who held onto power at the piers for a hundred years, littering the neighborhood with gunfire and dead bodies.
It's all here: the brutal mob hits, bullet storms, and backstabbings of the most colorful cutthroats to ever terrorize the streets. A rogueâs gallery of killers with nicknames like âThe Mad Hatter,â âThe Executioner,â âWild Bill,â and âPeg Leg.â The Brooklyn bar fight that gave Al âScarfaceâ Capone his legendary scars. The godfather of Americaâs first Sicilian crime family whose gruesomely mangled hand could scare men half to death. And, to bring it all home, the authorâs own eyewitness account of multiple shootings growing up as the son of a Mafia bodyguard.
Packed with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafiaâs way of life, and shocking portraits of Americaâs most wanted crime families, Red Hook is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the history of organized crime in America.