Customer Reviews

A Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of New York City's Lower East Side (NY)

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Eric Ferrara's aptly titled book, A Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of the New York City's Lower East Side, reaches back to the crazy days of gangland shootings, street fights, mob hits, extortion plots, assassinations, police riots and various other violent events that once engulfed the turf of Irish gangs, Chinese tongs, Jewish racketeers, Italian tough guys, anarchists and psychos in the immigrant slums of the Five Points, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Bowery, Lower East Side and the East Village from the mid-19th century to well into the 20th - where weapons of choice ranged from revolvers, machine guns, knives, hammers, clubs, hatchets, broken bottles, brass knuckles, poison, acid and bombs. The book is laid out geographically so that walkers can discover surviving sites where all this mayhem took place. For armchair travelers, just sit back and enjoy a good read. The descriptive writing is lively and informative. The mug shots of the likes of Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach, Louis "the Lump" Pioggi, "Waxey" Gordon, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Charles "Lucky" Luciano and John Gotti are delicious. Everyone interested in crime and the dark side of the Lower East Side will be thrilled by this book.

As a native New Yorker I am always struck on the lack of historic markers for a city with such a rich history. E.g. contrast NYC with Philadelphia. This book goes a long way in filling in those much needed gaps for often times ignored neighborhoods and streets where real people (sometimes not so nice people) created real history

This is a genuinely unique and impressive piece of work, chock full of intensely gruesome, block by block tales of murder & mayhem. But this is more than that, touching on tales of the bizarre and curious, the famous and infamous, and the everyday man who were victims of their times. I recommend.

"Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of the Lower East Side," by Eric Ferrara is a grand tour of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, starting with the chapter, "Worth Street to Canal Street" and ending with "East Houston to 14th Street."

Ferrrera takes you on a block-by-block tour of the Lower East Side, with the exact addresses of where some truly horrible things happened to some mostly despicable people. He starts off in the time period where the first street gang in New York City, a bunch of head-cracking Irishmen deftly named the Dead Rabbits, controlled the slummed streets of the Five Points Area right before the Civil War. The Five Points area was populated with people so poor and filthy, the city had to come in frequently to disinfect the streets and buildings with intense chemicals.

We also meet such surly individuals like Chinese Tong Leader Mock Duck, who terrorized Chinatown at the turn of the Century. Then there's the unforgettable three Morrelo brother, Joe, Nick, and Antonio, who along with relatives Ciro Terranova and Ignazio Saietta (Lupo the Wolf), started the Black Hand Society, which extorted money from fellow Sicilians, under the threat of death, a punishment they frequently meted out.

If corrupt politicians are your favorite thugs, Fatty Walsh and Big Tim Sullivan, along with the indomitable Boss Tweed are featured here too, with the exact locations where they perpetrated their evil-doings, all in the name of the law.

Superstar gang leaders Charles "Lucky" Luciano, and his pal Meyer "The Little Man" Lansky are all Lower East Side boys too, along with Lansky's muscle, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. Lansky and Luciano first met in as school students, when Luciano's racket at the time was extorting pennies from skinny Jewish boys at a Lower East Side school, in return for him not beating them into a pulp. One day, Luciano picked on Lansky, and Lansky fought back tooth and nail, starting a lifetime friendship, also seeped in violence.

The bottom line is that "Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of the Lower East Side" is a fast read with the who, what, when, where and how of murders and thuggery in the Lower East Side, from right before the Civil War, up to the end of the 20th Century. This book is not for the faint of heart, but if you'd like a peek at the underbelly of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, you can't do better than reading this interesting, but sometimes alarming book.

This is an amazing resource for researching organized crime in New York. It's great to know the addresses associated with these gangsters.

Fascinating,invaluable guidebook to the largely forgotten underbelly of the Lower East Side/Five Points/Bowery/
Little Italy/Chinatown area history. Unearths some colorlful, and often grisly history (some based on police reports)and gives it a tremendous immediacy by supplying the actual building addresses of the people, places, and
events. A shudder ran through me as I discovered that my own immediate area was a hotbed of both Jewish and Italian gangsterdom, and the setting for multiple shootouts. Locals and tourists alike will have a field day
reading the stories and exploring the specific locales. Great fun!
---David Mulkins, History teacher at High School of Art and Design

If you are from NYC or just want to learn more about it's history, I strongly suggest picking up this book. It's like taking you're own private tour through the diverse Lower East Side community of NYC. A perfect addition to any library!

This is a fantastically researched work and it's easy to tell it's by someone who knows the Lower East Side, walked it's streets, lives its life for generations.... thank you.

Listen -- you want the last word, the physical history, the real deal? This book is history come alive and standing in your living room! I live on the Bowery, so I should know.

Eric Ferrara's "A Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of New York City's Lower East Side" is much-anticipated, since his walking tour was fascinating!