30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better Than Ever, December 18, 2001
This review is from: But He Was Good to His Mother : The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters (Paperback)
I love authors who revise their work instead of just recycling it. The first edition of But He Was Good to His Mother was good but marred by one embarrassing error: it repeated as fact the fictional murder of Moe Dalitz from the late William Roemer's novel War of the Godfathers. Rockaway was not the first author to make this mistake--Roemer and his publisher should have made it clearer their book was fiction--but the Dalitz murder is rightfully deleted from this edition and there is expanded, factual, and accurate information throughout on Jewish gangsters, including such legendary figures as Meyer Lansky (whom Rockaway interviewed), Bugsy Siegel, Lepke and Gurrah, Kid Cann, Dutch Schultz, Waxey Gordon, Longy Zwillman, Big Jack Zelig, Boo Boo Hoff (who introduced the tommy gun to Philadelphia's Prohibition underworld), Mickey Cohen, the Purple Gang and others. The rise and fall of the Jewish gangsters, their relationships to the Jewish community (roles in "upward mobility" and even as sometime defenders of their people); to the Italian mob; and to 20th Century urban America are explored wonderfully and insightfully. Rounding out the book are ample source notes and an excellent bibliography. This book is a labor of love by an author who likes to get his facts straight.
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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Big Tsuris, December 24, 2001
This review is from: But He Was Good to His Mother : The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters (Paperback)
A seldom-covered aspect of true crime history and Jewish history, "But He was Good to His Mother" is a fine read for anyone interested in either. It delves into the histories of several gangsters, their misdeeds, relationships to the Jewish community and anecdotes that shed some light on what these crimelords were really like. Plenty of photos are included.
Rockaway does a fairly good job of striking a balance in tackling a delicate subject. He points out the occasional admirable deeds of the gangsters (protecting American Jews from anti-semites, for example) while making it quite clear that these were very bad men. He fesses up that these killers and lawbreakers were admired by some in the community, but by no means all.
Occasionally, books about influential Jews get a little hokey when they gush over how the values of the Jewish community produced so many great people. (As though, without centuries of respect for learning by the Jews, Einstein might never have come up with relativity; whatever.) As a Jew myself, I think it feels more honest and refreshing to see it acknowledged that these same values and shared history produced some no-goodniks along the way, too. And ones who broke the stereotypes about Jews at that.
If anything, I'd have liked more information, more stories about the gangsters in the book. Especially nice would have been more on their role in the general public's perception and pop culture. The book doesn't tell you that the purple gang was infamous enough to be mentioned in Elvis Presley's JailHouse Rock, no opinion on who did a better job of playing Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth in "Hoodlum" or James Remar in "The Cotton Club"?), no word on whether Mickey Cohen was really as daft as James Ellroy portrays him, no mention of "Bugsy" or "The Godfather, part 2".
Still, I liked the book. I wouldn't label it an offer you can't refuse, but it's an offer it wouldn't kill you to accept.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
insightful, April 7, 1998
After reading more than fifty books by crime experts, I was thrilled to find this pick. This is in my opinion, one of the best accounts of jewish gangsters. More than sensational headlines Mr. Rockaway dives into the soul of the gangster. I was especially proud of the reference to my father, Allen Smiley, and the ancedote that went with it.
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