Tough Jews

by Rich Cohen

Back in the twenties and thirties in Brooklyn, there lived a breed of men who now exist only in legend and in the memories of a few old-timers. These men were Jewish gangsters, fearless thugs who worked for their nicknames: Buggsy Goldstein, Kid Twist Reles, Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Growing up in Brownsville, they made their way from street fights to underworld power, becoming the execution squad for a national crime syndicate. They were known as Murder Inc., a corporation dealing in death, which did for organized crime what Henry Ford did for the automobile. Tough Jews is the first in-depth portrait of these men, a glimpse of street-level thugs, the muscle that made possible the success of gangster statesmen such as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano.