March 2026 Book Review
Review of Michael Shnayerson, Bugsy Siegel: The Dark Side of the American Dream (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021).
By Rich Robinson
Jewish gangsters are perhaps most notoriously, but not exclusively, an American phenomenon. But in fact, the early 20th century similarly saw Jews engaged in organized crime in places like Odessa and London.[1] We could even go back to the Jewish sicarii of the First Revolt against Rome (66–70 AD) to find Jews gouging other Jews, stealing their food and often stealing their lives as well. But American gangsters came at a strange confluence between Europe and the United States, for it was the sons of Eastern European immigrants who turned to a life of crime in the New World.
Author Michael Shnayerson is a New York-based author of eight books on a range of nonfiction subjects. His biography of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel —Siegel hated being called “Bugsy”—is part of the wonderful series Jewish Lives, which presents accessible and lively accounts of a myriad of Jewish figures.
Writes Shnayerson in the Prologue:
This short biography is meant to keep Bugsy’s memory and importance alive, as a testament without judgment that a century ago, a small band of immigrant Jews did what they had to do to succeed in a harsh new world, assuring that their offspring would get to traverse the bright side of the American dream.[2]
I suppose that is one way of looking at it.
The chapter titles reflect the fast pace of both Bugsy’s life and the narrative. A sampling: “The Lure of the Streets”; “Marriage and Murder;” “The Masterminds of Murder Inc.”; “Bugsy Takes Charge”; “Time Runs Out.
There is a strange attraction to delving into the lives of Jews who were not doctors, lawyers, accountants, entertainers or movie moguls. I am not sure wherein exactly lies the allure of the Jewish underworld, unless it somehow shows us that Jews, for a change, weren’t going to be passive pushovers. (The same attraction applies to Jewish boxers,[3] also no pushovers in their Star-of-David boxing shorts and with their sharp pugilistic skills.
Bugsy Siegel is, among other things, a study in how one’s environment helps shape one’s life. To what should we attribute the rise of the Jewish gangster in America? To the packed-out tenements of the Lower East Side, hardly fit for human habitation? To the poverty of families who needed the financial support, here in the goldene medinah—the golden land which turned out to be, for so many, the fool’s-gold land? To the desire for the younger generation to rebel against the traditional, and to them stifling, ways of their immigrant parents? To the need to defend oneself against gangs and street toughs that proliferated like rats on the squalid streets? One writer said: “This explosive tension made it possible for the same family to produce saints and sinners, philosophers and gunmen.” [4] Indeed.
Read Bugsy Siegel: The Dark Side of the American Dream for yourself. You might find yourself weighing in on what goes into the making of any Jewish gangster, whether ancient sicarii in Jerusalem or the modern variety of London or Odessa or America. Some historian should compare the American Jewish gangster with his European counterparts. That should make for a fascinating read.
Siegel, incidentally, was pals with another noted Jewish thug, Meyer Lansky. And Siegel’s claim to fame, beyond bootlegging, racketeering, gambling and murdering,[5] was the establishment of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the western deserts of the U.S. Should you pay a visit to the Flamingo, walk around to the back where you will find a monument with a bas-relief sculpture of Siegel and a text-heavy description of his relationship to the hotel. The description also includes a brief account of his grisly murder, at age 41, on June 20, 1947—a murder that has never been solved.
[1] See e.g., https://www.npr.org/2011/02/27/134055091/dreams-death-and-jewish-gangsters-in-odessa; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Comer
[2] Loc. 131, Kindle edition.
[3] For which see, e.g.: https://reformjudaism.org/blog/why-every-depression-era-jewish-boy-wanted-be-boxer; https://forward.com/community/366045/the-secret-jewish-history-of-boxing/; and see the long list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_boxers
[4] Shnayerson, loc. 66, Kindle edition, quoting Albert Fried, The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), who is quoting Morris Raphael Cohen. So—a third-hand quote!
[5] See the Prologue, loc. 32, Kindle edition.