The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss

Format: Hardcover Language: English ISBN: 0593243854 ISBN13: 9780593243855 Release Date: July 2024 Publisher: Random House Length: 336 Pages Weight: 1.34 lbs. Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.5" America's first great organized-crime lord was a lady--a nice Jewish mother named Mrs. Mandelbaum. "A tour de force . . . With a pickpocket's finesse, Margalit Fox lures us into the criminal underworld of Gilded Age New York."--Liza Mundy, author of The SisterhoodIn 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, "Marm" Mandelbaum had become the country's most notorious "fence"--a receiver of stolen goods--and a criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods