Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gangster

by Robert Lacey

First published in 1991 as Little Man: The Gangster Life of Meyer Lansky, the original text has been revised and updated for this edition by Robert Lacey, and much bonus material added.

“Daring and well written … it would be criminal not to read it.” People magazine

They called Meyer Lansky the Godfather of the Godfathers, the Chairman of the Board of the National Crime Syndicate, the Mafia’s banker. They credited him with a personal fortune of $300 million, with having said “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.” He was portrayed on the screen in The Godfather, Part II as Hyman Roth, dividing up Cuba with his fellow gangsters, and more recently in Boardwalk Empire as himself, played by Anatol Yusef.

If, in the mythology of organized crime, Al Capone symbolized the crude menace of the machine gun and the baseball bat, Meyer Lansky stood for the brains, the sophistication, the hot money, the sheer cleverness of it all. And yet, when it came down to it, no law enforcement official in 60 years could find much to pin on the supposed boss of bosses, and within a few years of Lansky’s death, his crippled son was living on welfare.

Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gangster is a book about organized crime unlike any other yet written. In this brilliant biography and social history, Robert Lacey separates the strands of fact and legend in Meyer Lansky’s career, revealing a truth about the gangster life in America that is far more fascinating and dramatic than fiction.

A Jewish immigrant from Russia, Lansky broke into a life of crime running crap games and acting as a shtarke, a strong-arm man for Jewish and Italian gamblers on the Lower East Side of New York. Teaming up with his pals Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegel, he graduated to bootlegging. Meyer became the master of the “share-out,” keeping all the figures in his head and dividing up the spoils from smuggled liquor shipments. In the thirties and forties he moved on to illegal gambling, running the classiest casinos around. He invested in modern Las Vegas – though he never really liked the place – and became the gambling consultant to President Batista during Havana’s glory days. In World War II he even acted as a go-between for U.S. Naval Intelligence, paving the way for gangster help to the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Then in 1951 Estes Kefauver’s Senate Crime Committee named Lansky as one of the leaders of organized crime in America, fueling the legend that would eventually destroy him. Cuba’s revolutionary leaders expelled him in 1960 as a corrupting influence. His attempts to go into legitimate business and later to settle in Israel were frustrated by the shadows of his past. His every step was dogged by the FBI and the IRS, as his family disintegrated and his health declined. His death was front-page news, but at the end, his power and wealth were all gone.

Based on dramatic new documentation and firsthand interviews with Lansky’s close friends and business associates, with law enforcement experts, and members of the Lansky family, Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gangster is a powerful and irresistible narrative of a man and a way of life never before truly examined. Robert Lacey has written, in this bestselling biography, a groundbreaking exploration of organized crime in America and of our enduring fascination with criminals.

Genres: True Crime, Biography, Crime, Nonfiction, History, American History, The United States Of America

584 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Robert Lacey is a British historian noted for his original research, which gets him close to - and often living alongside - his subjects. He is the author of numerous international bestsellers.

After writing his first works of historical biography, Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert wrote Majesty, his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Published in 1977, Majesty remains
acknowledged as the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which the author continues to write and lecture around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live.

The Kingdom, a study of Saudi Arabia published in 1981, is similarly acknowledged as required reading for businessmen, diplomats and students all over the world. To research The Kingdom, Robert and his wife Sandi took their family to live for eighteen months beside the Red Sea in Jeddah. Going out into the desert, this was when Robert earned his title as the "method actor" of contemporary biographers.

In March 1984 Robert Lacey took his family to live in Detroit, Michigan, to write Ford: the Men and the Machine, a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic which formed the basis for the TV mini-series of the same title, starring Cliff Robertson.

Robert's other books include biographies of the gangster Meyer Lansky, Princess Grace of Monaco and a study of Sotheby's auction house. He co- authored The Year 1000 - An Englishman's World, a description of life at the turn of the last millennium. In 2002, the Golden Jubilee Year of Queen Elizabeth II, he published Royal (Monarch in America), hailed by Andrew Roberts in London's Sunday Telegraph as "compulsively readable", and by Martin Amis in The New Yorker as "definitive".

With the publication of his Great Tales Robert Lacey returns to his first love - history. Robert Lacey is currently the historical consultant to the award-winning Netflix series "The Crown".

Reviews

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I noticed some of the reviews on Amazon of this book called it a whitewash. I would say thats true to say the least. For that matter at times it almost reads like a tribute. This shouldn't be surprising considering Laceys main primary source for this book was Lanskys son. You would think Meyer Lansky was just a hard working business man that straddled the line of legality from time to time when he ran his bootleg liquor and gambling parlors. He claims that Lansky never ordered a hit or even used intimidation when running his rackets. The only violent incidents mentioned were streetfights growing up and Lansky allegedly going with a group of hoodlums and breaking up a "Nazi" (they were actually pre-WW2 German-American nationalists) meeting.

Most historians acknowledge that the Mafia almost certainly had serious dirt on J. Edgar Hoover and many think Lansky was the one that had the pics to prove it if you know what I mean. There are even those that claim Lansky was in on the JFK assassination and attempts to kill Castro. I won't even bother with going into how Hollywood has made organized crime out to be an Italian/Sicilian thing when the truth is some of the most ruthless gangsters were Jews. I'll also skip over just how Russian the "Russian" Mafia really is.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and well written biography of Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky. The book begins with his birth in a small Jewish village called Grodno in Eastern Europe and subsequent immigration at ten years of age to America with his family. The book details his youth as a precocious young gambler and his entry into bootlegging during Prohibition years. LITTLE MAN describes his underworld contacts and friends (Frank Costello, Benny Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Charlie "Lucky" Luciano etc) and the most notable incidents of his life such as his setting up the collaboration with the U.S. Navy with the then imprisoned Luciano to defend the East Coast from Nazi saboteurs and u-boats to his relationship and involvement with Benny Siegel in "Bugsy's" financial adventures and consequent assassination in Las Vegas.

My biggest problem with this book is that the author is extremely sympathetic to Lansky and writes his biography almost like a tribute to him. He views Lansky like an ideal product of the American dream, a patriotic Jewish American businessman who dealt in fairly harmless vices such as gambling, carpet joints, and casinos and who relied on an aura of violence he cultivated through his underworld contacts and business associates to do "his business" while never condescending to put a hit on anyone or resorting to the use of violence himself. The biography almost makes it sound like America's criminalization of gambling is what made the virtually harmless diminutive in stature gangster a criminal. That otherwise he'd just have been no different than any other successful businessman. It also only briefly touches on his early Prohibition years, completely ignoring the fact that the Jewish-American Bugs and Meyer Mob had a reputation for being one of the most notoriously violent Prohibition gangs of the 1920s.

Was Meyer Lansky just a family man, a first-rate business man, who was just a shadow figure in the criminal underworld, avoiding violence as much as possible and preferring legality if given the choice? Whose reputation is one that is unfounded, blown out of proportion, and sensationalized by his associations with that eras most violent gangsters? According to Robert Lacey, that is the case.

[Neil Pierson · Rating 3 out of 5]

During his lifetime, Meyer Lansky was the stuff of organized crime legend. He was portrayed as the Chief Financial Officer of the Mafia, devising brilliant devices to turn illicit schemes into wealth for gangsters and accruing a great fortune himself.

In reality, he was an interesting figure but nowhere near the hype.

He started life as a poor, Jewish kid who emigrated to New York from Russia with his family. He had a great faculty for numbers and became fascinated by the craps games he observed on New York's sidewalks. He quickly mastered the odds, which led him to the immediate realization that the games were rigged. He watched the scams closely and was able to predict when the games' operators were going to allow a sucker to win. He rode along with the winners, then got off before the ride ended. He was able to win regularly as long as he didn't get greedy and didn't call any attention to what he was doing. Those were lessons he remembered all his life. He observed something else while watching the craps games: The bettors knew the games were rigged. But they played anyway. A player plays even when he knows better.

As an adult, Lansky's specialty was running gambling casinos, legal or otherwise. He grasped the ironic truth: To have a long and successful criminal career, you have to be honest. Gamblers knew that at Lansky's casinos, the odds favored the house, but the games were fair. Lansky's colleagues in organized crime knew that when Lansky split the proceeds, everyone got their fair share.

While he was alive, it was said that Lansky could have been fabulously successful as a straight businessman. But that wasn't true. Most of his legitimate investments failed. His biggest investment and failure was the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Havana. Although it was the product of massive bribery of Cuban government officials and others, the hotel and casino were licensed and legal. Lansky was heavily invested and stood to make millions. But the Cuban revolution happened, the hotel and casino were seized by the government, and Lansky lost his stake. He spent the rest of his life trying to scratch together a living from skimming Las Vegas casinos and other small schemes.

Those looking for justice in the universe would be gratified by Lansky's final years. As an old, sick man, he was denied residence in Israel; he was hounded by the FBI; the INS tried to deport him; his three children were hellishly dysfunctional; and he died broke.

[Checkman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Lacey has had a decades long career as a professional biographer. He has written about such diverse people as Queen Elizabeth II, Henry Ford and Meyer Lansky over the years and many of his books have enjoyed brisk sales. I've read a few of his works and I've always found them to be solidly put together. He isn't sensationalistic and works at presenting a balanced and clear-eyed bio of whatever person he is writing about.

Meyer Lansky has become a legend of American Crime. The financial genius who built the Mafia into a vast wealthy shadow government that had fingers into everything. Lacey's biography doesn't show him as a financial genius who ran the Mafia, but instead a moderately successful businessman who failed in all legitimate enterprises and wasn't all that successful with the illegitimate enterprises either. There is nothing showing that Lansky was involved with the bloodier aspects of organized crime either. Finally, Lansky's personal life is shown to be a real train wreck and Lansky as just a so-so father and husband. Hardly the stuff that Dark Overlords are made of.

There are many who are of the opinion that Mr. Lacey did some whitewashing of Lansky's life. I have to say it is totally understandable why they feel this way. Lansky's entire adult life was spent as a gangster. He wasn't a middling businessman and Rotarian despite that being the image he liked to present. He made money for the mob and that made him an earner for the mob. The mob specialized in making money from illegal activity and Lansky was in it up to his eyeballs. I do find it a bit naive on Mr. Lacey's part that he doesn't look at that aspect more closely.

Regardless it's a very readable biography. It might not be a muckraking read, but it held my interest and taught me some things I didn't know. It's worth the time.

[Harold · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this. An un-hyped biography that dispenses with all the mythology surrounding it's subject. Meyer Lansky has been heralded for the past 40 years as a criminal mastermind that organized the rackets into a corporate entity that was "bigger than US Steel." In reality he was primarily, after a beginning as a bootlegger, a guy that ran legal and illegal casinos. He ran them honestly, believed in the power of the payoff when it came to the authorities and the strength of being a man of his word. He was never connected by any law enforcement agency with murder or muscle. He had a spotless reputation among his associates, many of whom were mobsters, as being scrupulously honest and keeping his commitments. In the 60s and 7os he began to painted as a criminal mastermind. Law enforcement agencies shadowed him for 25 years and could never come up with anything. Of course this was taken as evidence of just how slick he was. Well...apparently he was just what he claimed to be. A gambler. All the hype took a toll on his life. He didn't want the attention. When called before the Kefvauver committee in a private moment he asked Kefauver, who liked to gamble, why he was so keen on persecuting gamblers. Kefauver replied "I just don't want you people running it." Of course the "you people" meant Italians and Jews. And who runs gambling today? The big corporations. Kind of makes you think.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic biography of Meyer Lansky, the greatest Jewish Gangster in America.

[Joe Pestka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, impressive amount of interviews and travel required to amass the details to write this book, I would recommend.

[Chuck Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it...The author was a fan of Lansky for sure.
Very detailed ...sometimes a little too detailed.
Overall a great book...

[Steven jb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A biography is a difficult proposition. It must include the events in a persons life, but information from the early years preceding a person's fame are not always easy to obtain or to understand its context. The events of the stubject's associates, and the surrounding world that interacts with them can be difficult to interpret, and previously written reports necessitates reliance upon other writer's skill and integrity in reporting. Understanding the individuals meaning, to themselves, to others, their emotions, desires, their achievements and disappointments is most difficult. The writer's own sensibilities might interfere, and then he must again rely upon the impressions of others. Even if he could interview the subject of the biography, would that interview yield anything beyond an individual's tainted self image, or desire for remembrance? The author, Mr. Lacey, interviewed many of the people closest to Mr. Lansky, and researched his subject well without always drawing definite conclusions, but rather providing the ambience that would provide some sense of the subject but allowing the nebulousness of an individual's existence. This was an excellent biography of Meyer Lansky's life, some of the good, some of the bad, some of the triumphs, and some of the sad disappointments, but like every individual's Rosebud, there are things we shall never know.

[J.H Gaines · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely Loved this book1 we have all seen the films and the documentary's so I brought this off of eBay and gave it a go, it is one of the only books I have actually read twice.
it is fascinating to see how New York was at the turn of the century and legalised gambling came to be in america, it is a great insight into gambling from the back room games in New York to the swanky parlours in Sarasota springs and Miami to ultimately Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
the book captures the feel of the time very well and you can visualise the locations and almost hear the click of the roulette wheel and the dealing of the cards.
A fascinating insight into the USA and to how so much of the country was built by people like Lansky.

[Anthony Ambruso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book

This was an excellent biography of Meyer Lansky. It was well-written, thoroughly researched , and honestly told. I don't read many "mafia" books. This one interested me because I thought there might be some redeeming qualities of Lansky. He was arithmetically smart, but knew nothing about family and life. One thing this book did cause me to do was to reevaluate my long held beliefs about "the mob." I now believe Hoover had it right, and I dislike giving him credit for anything.

[Walt · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book on Lansky. Probably the best. Lacey details his gambling career; collects as much as he can on Lansky's bootleg career; and probably spends too much time on Lansky's legal and family troubles late in life. Lacey clearly argues that Lansky was poor and in retirement by the time he left the country to avoid legal proceedings.

[VEL – The Contemporary Heretic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cutting Lansky Down to Size
Originally titled ‘Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life’, later reissued as ‘Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gangster’, the original title is more apt.

Although Lansky was, to my knowledge, never actually known by the sobriquet ‘Little Man’, Lacey’s biography is indeed concerned with cutting Lansky down to size.

Gangster?
Organized crime history is a topic that has rarely attracted serious researchers. Lacey concludes:

“There is a dire need for objectively analysed data on organized crime, an area which academics have too readily surrendered to the custody of popular entertainment” (p445)

However, Lacey could almost be accused of failing to take his own advice, since Lansky was, in his own telling, only on the fringes of organized crime for most of his life.

Lansky did not see himself as a gangster. After a youthful dalliance in bootlegging, he saw himself as a businessman whose chosen line of business, casino gambling, happened to be unlawful.

This makes much of Lacey’s bio less exciting than one might expect for a book ostensibly in the ‘true crime’ genre.

Lansky’s early years as a bootlegger are passed over quickly. Most of the book concerns his later years as a gambler, and semi-retirement.

Gang wars occur only in the background. Lacey discounts any notion of Lansky’s involvement in such assassinations as those on Albert Anastasia or Bugsy Siegel.

Lansky sought to distance himself from other criminal activities, even other victimless crimes:

“Throughout his adult career, Meyer Lansky was careful to distance himself from the ‘dirty’ crimes⁠—drugs, prostitution” (p159)

“I haven’t ever dealt in narcotics,” he told a journalist “with a mixture of pride and distaste” (p90).

Likewise, prostitutes were not permitted to frequent or solicit in his respectable ‘carpet joint’ casinos.

Yet Lansky adduces tentative evidence that Lansky may have begun his criminal career as a pimp. Each of his first appearances before the courts involved assaults on women, who, Lacey infers from their addresses, were likely prostitutes (p42-3).

Yet operating in an illicit industry and hence unable to turn to the cops, Lansky necessarily relied on muscle, albeit contracted out at arm’s length.

Lacey therefore concludes that, for all his bourgeois pretentions, Lansky remained a gangster:

“Ethically and practically, the perceived threat of muscle is the same as muscle itself, and all Meyer’s businesses rested ultimately on that threat” (p170)

The Myth of the American Mafia
The claim that Lansky was not involved in criminal activities besides gambling may be true, but Lacey is less persuasive when he claims that, by the 1950s, the same was true of Lansky’s friend and sometime partner Frank Costello.

“There is no evidence that Frank Costello was involved in street activities like loan-sharking, drug-dealing, or pimping” (p189)

But Costello was then supposedly boss (or acting-boss) of what is now the Genovese crime family. As boss, he would receive a cut of money made by other criminals in his family who did commit such crimes.

This leads to a topic on which Lacey has an interesting take—namely, the Mafia.

A recurrent theme in recent histories of the Mafia (e.g. John Dickie’s history of the Scilian Mafia) is that those who denied the Mafia’s existence (e.g. J Edgar Hoover) were at best naïve, at worst conniving lackeys of the Mafia itself.

Lacey’s view is more nuanced. He does not deny the existence of the Mafia:

“Countless law enforcement agencies… have shown that America is riddled with local associations of Italian malefactors. Mafia is as good a name for them as any” (p203).

However, he does question what we mean by the term, insisting that the Mafia was not a national criminal conspiracy, but a combination of local ones.

Therefore, whether the Mafia exists depends on how we define ‘the Mafia’.

Hoover, long famous for denying the existence of the Mafia, took advantage of this semantic pedantry to assert that he had been right all along—the ‘Mafia’ did not exist but ‘Cosa Nostra’ did and moreover suddenly represented a nationwide threat (p293).

Then, to compound confusion, the FBI invented a new term—not ‘Cosa Nostra’ but ‘La Cosa Nostra’, henceforth abbreviated to in FBI documentts to ‘LCN’ (p293).

Unfortunately, this made no grammatical sense in Italian, translating to roughly ‘The Our Thing’ (Five Families: p136). Thus, Lacey argues:

“After all the arguments, the FBI dedicated itself to the pursuit of an entity which literally did not exist” (p293)

Institutional Bias?
The myth of a nationwide crime syndicate had its roots, Lacey argues, in the Kefauver committee, a senate committee which was, Lacey contends, responsible for several “fundamental and enduring misconceptions” about organized crime in America, including that it was nationally structured.

Why then did the committee reach this conclusion? Lacey argues:

“As a national, federally constituted body… the committee was predisposed to a singular nationwide explanation…The Kefauver committee had no choice but to reach such a conclusion, for if organized crime was not fundamentally a matter of interstate commerce, then what business did an arm of the Senate have lavishing so much time and attention on the subject?” (p203)

If crime was not a national but a local problem, then it was properly the province of state governments, not the federal Congress. Thus, if the committee had not decided as it did, it would have undermined the constitutionality of its own remit.

The Commission: Intergovernmental or Federal?
What then of the so-called National Commission, said to control organized crime across America? Lacey does not mention it specifically, but he does acknowledge that “gang leaders might meet from time to time for sit-downs at which they would sort out disputes over territory and common threats” (p66).

However, Lacey maintains:

“While local groupings of mafiosi can generate quite active links between each other, they do not constitute, and have never constituted, a centrally, almost corporately structured organization such as the one the Kefauver Committee led America to believe existed” (p204)

Thus, the Commission seems to been more intergovernmental than federal in structure—more analogous to, say, the United Nations or League of Nations than to the US federal government or even the EU.

Certainly, it had prestige and, in a world of crime, even a certain perverse perceived legitimacy.

Yet as Stalin once remarked contemptuously of the Pope, it commanded no divisions—or capos, soldiers and associates—of its own.

Mafia Ranks?
Just as the Kefauver Committee was predisposed to see a nationwide crime group, so law enforcement, Lacey argues, were predisposed to seeing a hierarchical structure.

Thus, Lacey argues that the charts famously adorning police walls in Mafia movies, and attributing to Mafiosi such ranks such as ‘soldier’, ‘capo’ and ‘underboss’, reflected, not so much real mafia ranks, as much as did:

“The bureaucratic and semimilitary cast of thought prevailing in the average police office. Everybody had a rank, and they did little justice to the confused, fluid, and essentially entrepreneurial character of most criminal activity” (p293)

Thus, Lacey notes the difficulty Valachi had in explaining to senators that ‘soldiers’ received no salary, but instead were expected to pay their ‘boss’ a cut of what they made (p293).

He also notes the difficulty of fitting Lansky into this hierarchical scheme. Officially, Lansky, a non-Italian, was ineligible for membership, and hence a mere ‘associate’. But even Lacey admits this does not do Lansky justice (p292).

The Kosher Nostra?
Another mafia myth Lacey purports to debunk is that “the early thirties saw America’s gangsters became overwhelmingly Italian” (p65).

“This makes no allowance for the flourishing in New York City, throughout this period and beyond, of Dutch Schultz, Lepke Buchalter, Jake ‘Gurrah’ Shapiro, and Benny Seigel—four tough Jews… responsible for more deaths between them than Lucky Luciano and all the Padrones in the Castellammarese Wars” (p65).

Actually, this myth is not so much wrong as about a decade premature.

Dutch Schultz was assassinated in 1935; the Purple Gang imploded in the 1930s; Murder, Inc, was broken up in the 1941; Bugsy Siegel gunned down in 1947. Unlike Mafia families, some of which have endured the better part of a century over several generations of leadership, the criminal organizations of Buchalter, Schultz and Siegel did not outlive them.

Henceforth, Jews like Lansky operated only as adjuncts to Mafia families, not as independent powers in their own right.

This is a process known as ‘ethnic succession’—the Jews followed the Irish, and were followed in turn by the Italians, just as the Italians are now themselves being displaced by blacks and Latinos—though the Jewish displacement was especially fast owing to their exceptional upward social mobility.

Vegas and Cuba
Another Mafia myth that Lacey debunks is that Bugsy Siegel was the lone visionary who created the modern Las Vegas as a gambling oasis amid the Nevada desert.

Actually, in Lacey’s telling, Siegel was almost a latecomer:

“When he arrived in Las Vegas in 1941, there was already one luxurious hotel-casino in the desert… and in December 1942 [it] was joined by an even larger and more luxurious development” (p150).

Thus, Lacey concludes:

“Seigel did not invent the luxury resort hotel casino. He did not found the Las Vegas Strip. He did not [even] buy the land or first conceive the project that became the Flamingo. But by his death he made them all famous” (158).

Meanwhile, Lansky was even less involved in Vegas. Instead, he chose to back a different horse—Cuba.

Yet, whereas Bastista, the Cuban dictator, was indeed a visionary who foresaw the wealth that a growing tourist industry could bring to a country like Cuba, he was overthrown by puritanical communists opposed to gambling, prostitution, sex tourism and other such fun and healthy recreational activities.

The main losers were the Cubans, subject to sixty years of communism and US sanctions—but a lesser loser was Lansky, the consummate gambler, who, in the greatest investment of his life, had backed a losing horse.

“Meyer Lansky had staked his personal bankroll solidly on the success of the Riviera – to the exclusion of almost everything else… Meyer Lansky had invested much more than his money in the Havana Riviera. He invested himself. He gambled everything—and, as he later put it, ‘I crapped out’’” (p257-8).

Financial Genius?
Lansky has been called the “accountant to the Mob”. In reality, “The Mob”, as a whole, not being a monolithic entity, had no single accountant, and, if it did, they would probably have picked someone who was, well… an accountant.

Indeed, far from the financial wizard of popular imagining, Lansky himself “ruefully remarked… more than once” that he had an “unerring ability… to lose money whenever he went legit” (p296).

“In his better moments Meyer managed to laugh at his atrocious sense of timing as a businessman… the millions lost in Cuba, his inability to take legal advantage of Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Atlantic City, or anywhere else that his own game of casino gambling became legal in his later years” (p430).

These failures show, for Lacey, that Lansky was an inept businessman when the playing field was level (p172).

Mafia Millions?
Hank Messick, who launched a literary career mythologizing Lansky, claimed:

“Lansky’s wealth is reliably estimated at $300 million” (quoted: p311)

Yet, after Lansky lost his millions in Cuba, Lacey concludes:

“Meyer would have had a hard job listing realizable assets and cash resources that stretched as far as $3 million” (p312).

Even Messick later backed away from his claim, insisting:

“It was not my figure. It came from an expert who was supposed to know what he was talking about” (p311)

As for the claim, “We’re bigger than US Steel”—a quotation so famous it got into The Godfather II script—Lacey traces its origin to an FBI bug.

Lansky was watching “a documentary… on organized crime, followed by a discussion among a studio panel of experts” (284).

“Meyer sat in silence… until one of the panellists ‘referred to organized crime as only being second in size only to the government itself’. Lansky remarked to his wife that organized crime was bigger than US Steel” (p284).

The transcript was all that remained, the tapes having been recorded over and the transcript “shows that the agent chose to paraphrase” (p284).

Yet the context of the remark suggest it was made in disbelief, and concerned organized crime as a whole, not Lanksy’s own investments, but:

“By the time that Lansky’s comment was made public five years later… it had also been subtly altered: ‘We’re bigger than US Steel’” (p284)

Notoriety
What then explains Lansky’s notoriety? His first error seems to have been taking his second wife on a luxurious honeymoon.

“For whatever reason… Meyer had broken the cardinal rule that he had laid down to Vinnie Mercurio: ‘You must not advertise your wealth’… [Until then] Lansky’s name had only been mentioned, almost in passing, in occasional articiles lists New York racketeers and gangsters… But with his appearance on the front page of the New York Sun and his first ever newspaper photograph, Lansky was starting on the path to becoming an underworld star in his own right” (p176).

Lansky had made the same error as the fictionalized frank Lucas in the movie ‘American gangster’—showing off his money to impress his new spouse.

The price of fame was years of law enforcement harassment and failed prosecutions, even into his dotage.

Perversely, in his appeal for amnesty in Israel, even Lansky’s lack of serious criminal convictions was used against him.

That he had few criminal convictions, the government argued, only demonstrated his power and hence untouchability (p243-4).

Antisemitism?
Lansky himself blamed this harassment on antisemitism, about which he was hypersensitive, if not paranoid (e.g. p197-8). Indeed, Lacey even interprets Lansky as blaming the Israeli Supreme Court’s dismissal of his appeal against the decision not to grant him amnesty on antisemitism (p351).

The popular image of Lansky is indeed redolent of familiar antisemitic canards:

“Often hinted at, if seldom explicitly stated, Meyer Lansky’s Jewishness was an important part of his mystique” (p313).

Indeed, Lacey even links Lansky with the archetypal ‘Bond villain’:

“Unprepossessing little men, for the most part, they terrorized with the power of their minds… and to judge from their names, could never be mistaken for WASPs – Blofeld, Stromberg, Dr Julius, Drax” (p313).

Criminal Mastermind?
How smart then was Lansky? Certainly he was good with figures. He also had a remarkable memory, which facilitated the expedient of not having to write anything down that could be used as evidence against him (p53).

Someone who got to known Lansky well, however, concluded that he was “reasonably sharp and quick-witted” (p327), but “not intelligent” (p339).

This was the opinion, not of a criminal, but a lawyer.

Perhaps then Lansky was regarded as an intellectual heavyweight only by dint of comparison with the company he kept.

Daniel Seligman notes that John Gotti, tested for IQ in School, “tested at 110”. Though Gotti was, despite his notoriety (or indeed because of it), an inept crime boss, Seligman concludes:

“[Since] criminals tend to have IQs clustered around 90, in a sense, then, you can think of Gotti’s rise to mob stardom as basically concordant with the general rule that smart people get to the top” (A Question of Intelligence: p35).

Thus, Lacey notes the amazement of Lansky’s criminal peers:

“Can you believe it? He’s even a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club” (p4).

Full (i.e. vastly overlong review) available my link text.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Meyer Lansky runs the mob and the mob runs America".
In our quarters, at the house of detention, I saw a Black O.G. reading this fascinating study of America's most successful and notorious gangster, which I had pored through years earlier. I'm going to tell you what I informed him: "Meyer Lansky was the Original Gangster. He never did one day in prison, even though he was into everything: bootlegging, illegal gambling, skimming casino profits and tax evasion. You now how he got away with it all? Two rules: First, always use intermediaries. If they get caught they knew exactly what they bargained for when you contracted them. Second, see to it that your name is never attached to anything. You don't own the casino or hotel; you don't sign your name to a trucking company manifesto. Nothing." The O.G. nodded in agreement and we became instant friends. Now for the bad news for those of you dreaming of entering the gangster life. Lansky's great weakness, his Achille's heel, was politics. He invested $6 million of his own money into building Havana's Riviera Hotel in 1957, in the middle of the Cuban Revolution! When Castro came to power on January 1, 1959 Meyer thought he could be bought off the same way he once had Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in his pocket. No, Meyer, Marxists don't function that way. Post-Revolution attempts to set up casinos in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and finally Great Britain all flopped and left Meyer cash dry. Golda Meyer, who had never heard of him, had Meyer expelled from Israel, where he lived for a few years as a Returned Jew. (Meyer came back to Tel Aviv under Menachem Begin, but that too ended in fiasco and extradition to the U.S.) Lansky was a case study of a brilliant man, a mathematical genius among other things, who could not operate in the legitimate world. But, as Robert Lacey documents and my the experience with my homeboy shows, he'll alway be a legend.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I know why I never began a gangster (just kidding)- it is a sad, lonely and empty life. I much enjoyed the author's easy-to-read style and sensitivities. There is one passage in the book that profoundly struck me as an important takeaway - as it cleverly summarizes why people with criminal traits and activities are real-life aliens barren of humanity. They are not one of us.

Lansky is said to have hypocritically used this quote in later life or perhaps it was just his simple act of contrition. However, it was much too late. Ironically this once $300 million dollar man died almost a pauper -leaving little behind for family or community. He was broke in so many ways.

"If you lose all your money - you lose nothing,

If you lose your health - you lose something,

If you lose your character - YOU LOSE EVERYTHING..."

Now to my way of thinking this is miles ahead of any prior commandments or authorities by providing a pearl of profound wisdom that will kindly guide us from cradle to grave. Words for the ages.

[Lyn Failes · Rating 5 out of 5]

📚 Book Review 📚
LittleMan: Meyer Lansky And The Gangster Life
#robertlacey
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My favourite kind of books involve the Mafia and their stories. I find them all so intriguing and have done for years. I accept that some bad things were carried out during the times but still it captures my attention.
This book focused on Meyer Lansky. Having read numerous books, I knew he was the brains of the operation but I throughly enjoyed the story of his beginnings in life right up to his death. He sure was a very intelligent man indeed and if I’m other business I’m sure he’d have been at the top of his game no matter what he did. I was surprised in some parts of his life. This book was obviously researched impeccably and written in a way that captures your attention and gives a different perception of Meyer Lansky. Excellent book

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[STEPHEN MACPHERSON · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fair biography of a man whose myth has been tied to the Hyman Roth character in The Godfather Part II. The myth of the Mafia even penetrated the US Government, particularly the Kefauver commission on Organized Crime in the 1950's. The government viewed Organized Crime as a corporation, when in reality it was a loose confederation of individual gangsters who ruled certain territories. Much of the business was conducted locally, at times, neighborhood to neighborhood, block to block. The idea of a crime conglomerate, a syndicate, feeds our desire for romantic outlaws. It also allowed the government lump gangsters into one common, all inclusive enemy. Corporations like US Steel, General Motors, Ford Motor Co., etc., had influence at the highest levels of government, and they were headed by smart, savvy men. Organized crime, with similar influence, needed criminal mastermind at its head. Meyer Lansky was that man. Though the government stated he was worth 300 million dollars, he died flat broke, moving from country to country to avoid American Justice. Most interestingly: In the 1950's, as potential presidential contenders lined up to succeed Truman, two senators in particular needed boosts: Estes Kefauver from Tennessee and Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. Both were fighting for the right to investigate Organized Crime. Kefauver won; McCarthy had to settle for Communists.

[John E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

enlightening

This book is an excellent portrayal of the life of one of the most notorious members of the gambling syndicate. Lansky was exceptionally intelligent. He earned straight A’s in the NYC public schools even though he did not even speak English when he immigrated to the United States. His interest in reading and economics continued throughout his life. He was also mathematically inclined and could work complicated formulas in his head. In spite of an alleged criminal life, he was kept his word in his dealings and was not greedy. Finally, the author reveals that the overwhelming majority of the famous criminal leaders died with few assets.

[Alk Personal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I'm new to understanding book quality stuff, but i think this book is great.

maybe not as source exhaustive as Tim Newark's "Boardwalk Gangster", but the sources of direct families themselves in addition to other reliable sources are already great to paint the real picture of Meyer the best one could do so far.

Robert Lacey is good in telling Meyer's stories here too, and can present a rather neutral, yet fairly critical view of Meyer, in a skewed world of mafia storytelling and history.

Definitely worth reading to get to know a bit about one of the most notorious figure in mafia history, and to demythicize the figure of Meyer Lansky

[Larry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok, it isn’t necessarily this book’s fault (entirely anyway) I gave it only one star.

See, here’s the thing: I have decided effective right now, I am done reading biographies of mobsters in America, Each time I think “well maybe this one will be unique, perhaps give me insight to an interesting, but deeply flawed character”.

And every motherfucking time I finish the thing and nope, it’s another waste of time, the guy is a despicable thug abut who the only interesting thing is he was a criminal.

Yep. My last Mafia book.

Fuck the mob.

[Cat Catalin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched, vividly told

I have started reading this book suspecting it’s a long words soup, meant to meander and wax dramatically. I was wrong! The book stands on professional research, bringing up surprising details from the life of a notoriously tight-lipped mafioso. Various stages of Lansky’s story are vividly told by the author. Fantastic biography!

[Christine Lamoreaux · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to quit reading this biography. IT WAS SOOOOOOOOO DULL. Not the subject ( I admire Lansky) but Lacey's prose is flat... and then out of the blue he moralizes: "Being Jewish, it seemed, only aroused pride in Meyer Lansky if it involved aggression and violence. The little Jew going to shul in his skullcap was not an object of respect. The little Jew who beat up Nazis was." This approach in any biography infuriates me and even though I've only made it to page 150 Lacey has done it one too many times. I dread reading the book and that means it is time to move on. Maybe I will be able to pick it up at a later time but I truly doubt it. Good luck to all who attempt it.
UPDATE: I did finish it but my opinion has not changed. It was excruciating and left me saddened. The ending was abrupt and horrible. Boo-hiss on Robert Lacy.

[Brandy Damron · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read on the life and legacy of Meyer Lansky. I was expecting the typical gangster biography, but this was an objective, well researched, fact based account of his life and his involvement with both the underworld and the "overworld".

[Mary Laws · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't believe everything you read

Once again history needs time to either get it right or continue the fallacy. Only the one that lived the life knows the truth and if he doesn't tell no one will ever know.

[Dewayne Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many people and events here. Very interesting and good read of American history. I first went to Las Vegas as a kid as my mother was a bingo player and she played at the Flamingo and also downtown. So I saw Vegas in the forties.

[Jaap · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems that everything I thought was true about Lansky ( “ co-founder “ of organized crime in the US ) turned out to be wrong. Very interesting story about the life and times , the successes and failures of the little whose myth was far greater than reality.

[John Demos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent telling of the true Meyer Lansky story

This book was very enlightening. It corrected many erroneous assumptions I had and taught new things I never knew about. I recommend this book highly.

[Jesus Mena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing Man

While he was not a violent person, he commanded a lot of respect among his fellow gansters.
I think he was also lucky no one felt he was a threat to the organizacion; as he faced so many investigations by the the FBI and State government.

[Carlos Dragonné · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para quienes hemos seguido las biografías de la mafia este libro es como simple recordatorio de cosas que ya sabemos. Nada nuevo aporta pero no es mal libro. Es uno facil para quienes quieran empezar.

[Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given this book a higher rating if I felt it was more honest. I felt it downplayed a lot of violence that happened and only specifically got into times when he was violent to be "the hero" instead of all the times it was to assert his position as a gangster.