Really interesting book about the 1940a which includes Places events in some historical and cultural perspective.Taking its cues from articles, novels, and films of mafia activity between 1920 and 1944 (with the true Murder Inc. trials taking place in 1941-1944), with witty banter.

New York hoodlums of the 1930s and 1940s with the focus on the top gangsters, the Mayor Fiorelle La Guardia, and prosecutor Thomas Dewey, DA Bill O'Dwyer. There are interplays of fact and fiction based upon the subject matter at hand (ie: real life vs the movies).

Great introduction into the period - and a localised view. For a more indepth view, Murder Inc: The Story of Organised Crime by Martin Short (from the beginnings to the 1980s).

Whalen examines the "Golden Age" of gangsters in New York City, particularly the constant interplay of popular culture and reality--gangsters modeled themselves after their portrayals in movies, which caused movies to react to be even more stylized, and moved the FBI to attempt its own counter-propaganda. I'm inherently turned off by gangsters, and authors who seem to get excited by them, so this is not one I particularly enjoyed--and the attempt to portray the mob as "postmodernist" is just trying too hard.