Author Dan Slater's "The Incorruptibles"

The Lo-Down Culture Cast

Host Traven Rice spoke with author Dan Slater about his new book, "The Incorruptibles - A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld," which focuses on the true stories of the Lower East Side underworld and the secret efforts by wealthy uptowners to eradicate them during the late 1800's and early 1900's.

It's a "harrowing, true-life tale of an immigrant underworld, a secret vice squad, and the rise of organized crime" in New York City. And most of it took place right here on these very neighborhood streets, as waves of Eastern European Jews were immigrating to the U.S., (pre-WWI) and in turn created one of the largest ghettos in the world.

In the mayhem of these teeming streets, a dense web of crime syndicates emerged.

Slater writes: "Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry.
But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands. Worried about the anti-immigration lobby and the uncertain future of Jewish Americans, the uptowners marshalled a strictly off-the-books vice squad led by an ambitious young reformer [Abe Schoenfeld].

The squad, known as the Incorruptibles, took the fight to the heart of crime in the city, waging war on the sin they saw as threatening the future of their community. Their efforts, however, led to unforeseen consequences in the form of a new mobster class who realized, in the country’s burgeoning reform efforts, unprecedented opportunities to amass power."

Dan Slater is the author Wolf Boys, which was a Chicago Public Library best book of the year, Love in the Time of Algorithms, and The Officer & the Entrepreneur. His new book, The Incorruptibles, was selected as an editors' pick by the New York Times Book Review. A graduate of Colgate University, New York Film Academy, and Brooklyn Law School, he has written for more than a dozen publications, including the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, New York magazine, the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, The New Yorker online, and GQ.