Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life [Mass Market Paperback]

Robert Lacey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1992

chronicles Lansky's life, discussing his boyhood with Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegel, his profitable associations with Frank Costello, his role as Havana casino owner, and more. Reprint. NYT.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This biography of the notorious hoodlum by the author of The Kingdom succeeds in deglamorizing a gangland figure around whom all sorts of mythology was created, both during his lifetime and after. A product of the ghetto on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Lansky (1902?-1983) spent his adolescence developing the conviction that, if there were an honest and a dishonest way of achieving a goal, the dishonest way was preferable. Like many members of organized crime in his era, he became a specialist, working with casinos. He was rigidly honest about not cheating the public and paying his partners their due. His family life was a horror: Lansky's first wife became semi-psychotic and their three children had miserable lives; his second marriage was somewhat better. The media-generated image of a financial eminence grise worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the gangland chairman of the board, was largely fictional. A major contribution to the history of organized crime in the U.S. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this intelligent, thoroughly researched biography, Lacey argues that Jewish gangster Lansky was primarily "a professional gambler . . . caught dodging his taxes," rather than the eminence grise of the Mafia as portrayed by the media. Maybe so, but Lansky was a master at keeping secrets and it is unlikely that his full criminal role will ever be known. Following the loss of his casino to the Cuban revolution in 1959, Lansky was denied Israeli citizenship in 1972 and died in a hospital in 1983. This sympathetic but objective account is brought to life with interviews of Lansky's family and friends. Superior to Dennis Eisenberg's Meyer Lansky ( LJ 10/1/79), it is recommended for crime collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/90.
- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 691 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (November 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316511633
• ISBN-13: 978-0316511636
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,221,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"It's all here," says Tom Brokaw " - Islam, the family tree, a sea of oil and money to match, palace intrigue and the place of Osama Bin Laden. This is high drama and an epic tale. Dazzling - on every level". Robert Lacey is an historian and biographer whose research has taken him from the Middle East ("The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud") to America's Mid-West ("Ford: the Men and the Machine"). "Majesty", his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II, is the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which Robert lectures around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live. To research and write his latest book, "Inside the Kingdom", he went to live in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for three years. You can read more about Robert's new book - and also view his acclaimed TV film report for PBS NOW on Saudi extremists - on his website www.insidethekingdom.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A well written whitewash, March 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life (Hardcover)

After I read this book I couldn't help but smile. This is the ultimate whitewash book. After having spent years of investigating Meyer Lansky and his criminal world, I can honsetly tell you, this is not a book about Meyer Lansky. This is a book about Robert Lacey misunderstanding Meyer Lansky. Laceys information comes mostly from Lanskys family, then especially from his disabled son, Buddy Lansky. What Lacey should've done is look more into the work Hank Messick did on Lansky. Messick got his information from the underworld itself and interviewed gangsters, prosecutors and FBI men. Lacey overlooks these sources. Let's be realistic here. Lacey claims Lansky poured all his money into The Riviera Hotel in Havana. This is a ridiclious claim!. Lansky was known to spread his money all over the place. His specialty was laundering mafia money through mob controlled banks (like Bank Of World Commerce) or through Swiss bank accounts. Lansky had used these methods since the '30s. He made a fortune from his bootlegging enterprises and it is well known Lansky skimmed more money from Vegas then probably any other mob figure. Top mafia informant, Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno, one-time underboss of the L.A. Cosa Nostra Family repeatedly emphasized Lanskys strong hold on the skimming in Vegas. "Meyer Lansky and his group skimmed more money then anybody in the world. From Las Vegas alone, they got 300 million easy!". That's a direct quote from Fratianno himself. Of course Lansky wasn't stupid and he would have many people believe that he indeed lost everything in Cuba. Hank Messick used to say, Meyer Lansky didn't own property, he owned people. And as far as the mystery surrounding Lansky, you have to look at the people around him. Appearantly men like Alvin Malnik missed Laceys eye. If you wanna know about Lansky, then read Hank Messick or "Mogul Of The Mob" by Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Meyer Lansky;Yes ,Gangster Life;Not Really, March 28, 2005

By 

M. Cohen "yes, i read" (long island, new york) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life (Hardcover)

The book is well written and is full of interesting personal facts about Lansky, but comes up shorthanded in details about the man's enterprise.There is little mention of his role in the
rampant bootlegging in the 1920's and the violence that went along with it.This is a good book if you are already familar with Lansky and want more information on his personal character.Much of the details are provided by his son Buddy and numerous others that were close to him, but not in a "business" sense.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of the Gangster as a poor schlep., July 26, 2000

By 

Tim Lieder "Founder of Dybbuk Press" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life (Mass Market Paperback)

According to the acknowledgements, Robert Lacey set out to write a biography about a monster and ended up writing about a more successful than average crook with a lot of family troubles. While there is still the "crime doesn't pay" moralizing, Lacey is too honest of a biographer to fall into the Kefauver conspiracy theory about the mob as a vast corporate entity and portrays Meyer Lansky and associates as business allies by convenience.

Most of the book seems to have been culled from interviews with Buddy Lansky, Meyer Lanksy's quadraplegic son who died shortly before publication. From that perspective most of Lansky's life involves his personal life including his fights with his first (insane) wife and his relationship with his second wife hated by all three children. There are anecdotes about his rebellious daughter Sandra, his emotionally crippled son Paul and his physically crippled son Buddy. In one of the anecdotes Paul's daughter, Myra Lansky, tries to contact him after 8 years of silence only to be told by Sandra to respect Paul's privacy. (like a father has a right to completely ignore and forget about his children). Another anecdote concerns the fact that Meyer blamed Buddy's wife for his financial troubles and Buddy told his wife "my dad thinks we should get a divorce" and on that alone, divorced her.

What comes out of this book is a miserable life of a guy who was a fighter all his life and didn't have enough business sense to go straight. All of his investments ultimately failed and his legal troubles ate up all of his money. He couldn't even emigrate to Israel when he rediscovered his Jewish roots.

While we are left with a sad portrait of Meyer Lansky's personal life there seems to be fairly light treatment of his professional life. Some of the gambling institutions are covered and there is a chapter on the Cuban connection but once we are in the last two decades it's all heart attacks and fights with the second wife. One feels slightly cheated even though the author makes a point to stress that Meyer Lansky was not as financial successful as the myths around him would have you believe ("bigger than U.S. Steel, $300 million, etc.) but he did somehow find the money to pay for that lawyer and those trips to Israel.

Toward the end this becomes a depressing grim book. The only point of gaiety is Meyer and all his friends sitting around tv watching a miniseries based on his exploits.

All in all this is an excellent gangster novel for anyone who wants a more truthful accounting of mob life in America. However, if these truths were discovered at the outset, the myth of Meyer Lansky would not have grown to the extent that books like this would need to be written. It's not as fun as the mythology, but then again that's the point.

If you want a mob book that buys into the conspiracy and mythology check out The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano.