{"product_id":"the-talented-mrs-mandelbaum-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-american-organized-crime-boss","title":"The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss","description":"America’s first great organized-crime lord was a lady—a nice Jewish mother named Mrs. Mandelbaum.\n\n“A tour de force . . . With a pickpocket’s finesse, Margalit Fox lures us into the criminal underworld of Gilded Age New York.”—Liza Mundy, author of The Sisterhood\n\nA PARADE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR\n\nIn 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth?\n\nIn the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (nearly $300 million today) had passed through her Lower East Side shop. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime,” she planned robberies of cash, gold and diamonds throughout the country.\n\nBut Mrs. Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful crook: She was a business visionary—one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the scattershot enterprise of property crime. Handpicking a cadre of the finest bank robbers, housebreakers and shoplifters, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business.\n\nThe Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum paints a vivid portrait of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with nefarious rogues, capitalist power brokers and Tammany Hall bigwigs, all straddling the line between underworld enterprise and “legitimate” commerce. Combining deep historical research with the narrative flair for which she is celebrated, Margalit Fox tells the unforgettable true story of a once-famous heroine whose life exemplifies America’s cherished rags-to-riches narrative while simultaneously upending it entirely.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 0593243854\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: DBV.0593243854.G\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Fox, Margalit\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly!  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Dream Books Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41505100824634,"sku":"DBV.0593243854.G","price":7.79,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/6011\/0138\/files\/0593243854-0.jpg?v=1783147780","url":"https:\/\/shop.dreambooksco.com\/products\/the-talented-mrs-mandelbaum-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-american-organized-crime-boss","provider":"Dream Books Co.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}