Long before Brooklyn was known as the world's hippest neighborhood, it was the deadliest - the seedy, dangerous underbelly of New York City, where mobsters and gangs could commit murder and dump dead bodies without getting caught.
For more than a hundred years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn was Ground Zero for organized crime. Whoever controlled the piers controlled everything. From the infamous Irish gang known as The White Hand at the turn of the century, to the notorious Italian Gallo brothers who ran President Street--and everything else--generations later, the blood-soaked history of Red Hook is the story of American crime at its most powerful, corrupt, and coldly efficient.
It's all here: the brutal mob hits, bullet storms, and backstabbings of the most colorful cutthroats to ever terrorize the streets. A rogue's gallery of killers with nicknames like "The Mad Hatter," "The Executioner," "Wild Bill," and "Peg Leg." The Brooklyn bar fight that gave Al "Scarface" Capone his legendary scars. The godfather of America's first Sicilian crime family whose gruesomely mangled hand could scare men half to death. And, to bring it all home, the author's own eyewitness account of multiple shootings growing up as the son of a Mafia bodyguard.
Packed with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafia's way of life, and shocking portraits of America's most wanted crime families,
Red Hook is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the history of organized crime in America.
Frank DiMatteo is a lifelong Brooklynite, Mafia "survivor," and publisher of Mob Candy magazine. He is the author of Mob Candy's Brooklyn Gangsters and Manhattan Gangsters, and the coauthor, along with Michael Benson, of more than half a dozen nonfiction books on the history of organized crime, including his acclaimed memoir, The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia. He is a retired gangster and the son of a Mob hit man, with past interviews and appearances that include the New York Post, VICE, Business Insider, Late Night with Johnny P, and One on One with Steve Adubato. He was also an expert source in the HISTORY TV documentary American Godfathers: The Five Families.
Michael Benson is the acclaimed author of nonfiction history and crime books, including
Gangsters vs. Nazis,
Hollywood vs. Nazis,
Evil Season, and
Betrayal in Blood, as well as
Moguls, coauthored with Craig Singer. He is also one of America's most accomplished and popular Mafia experts, having coauthored numerous books on the subject, including
Carmine the Snake,
Mafia Hit Man,
Lord High Executioner,
Red Hook, and
Carlo Gambino with Frank DiMatteo and
Mafia Secrets with Gianni Russo
. He is a regular commentator, appearing on numerous radio and television shows such as
20/20,
On the Case with Paula Zahn, and
Deadly Sins on the ID: Investigation Discovery channel. A recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award, he can be found on Facebook @authorMichaelBenson.
