Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life

Part biography of Meyer Lansky and his family, part history of the gangster and organized crime in the U.S., and part critique of the treatment of gangsters in American thought and popular culture, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life is an invaluable book for anyone interested in the intersection of organized crime with American political and social life. Robert Lacey (whose history of Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'Ud, was a principal reference for General Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War) manages to touch upon such matters as the political origins of the word "gangster," the gangster/terrorist elements in the birth of Israel, and the role of anti-Semitism in building the American gangster show more myth (viz. "We're as big as U.S. Steel," the line breathed by Hyman Roth to Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part II; the character of Roth is based on Lansky) while painting a seamy, compelling and almost unbearably sad portrait of Lansky's family that is every bit as devastating as the Corleone saga in the first two Godfather movies. Lacey torpedoes the basis for a few conspiracy theories on the one hand (the aforementioned debunking of the "U.S. Steel" remark erroneously attributed to Lansky, but also setting the record straight on the anti-Semitic story that "The Big Bankroll" and shtadlan extraordinaire, Arnold Rothstein, fixed the 1919 World Series, and dismissing the FBI-promulgated myth of the "Sicilian Vespers," shown as occurring at least 15 years later in The Godfather), while supplying the germ for different theories on the other (such as remarking, in an endnote, that "It has been suggested that [Charles "Lucky"] Luciano and Lansky were in Chicago [in the spring of 1932] in preparation for the Democratic Convention which nominated [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt in June 1932" (note #73 to Chapter 3 ["'A Gray Rat, Waiting For His Cheese'"], p. 463; to say nothing of the dark and twisted roots of Israel's foundation).

Lacey convincingly argues that the truth is stranger than any fiction dreamed up by lazy or self-aggrandizing police investigators (whether federal or local) or sensationalistic crime reporters: a fact that one wishes had been learnt by the likes of Gus Russo (The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America) and Nick Tosches (King of the Jews). Little Man deserves a much wider audience than it has apparently enjoyed. show less

The truth behind the mythic career of America's most notorious criminal figure, by the bestselling author of Majesty, The Kingdom, and Ford: The Men and the Machine. Meyer Lansky was the boss of bosses, "Chairman of the Board" of a national criminal corporation, and model for Hyman Roth in The Godfather II. 32 pages of photographs.