Allan Levine

Historian and writer Allan Levine’s most recent book is Details Are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Café Society Murder.

My Uncle, the Crook
David Rabinovitch digs into the history of his mysterious relative who made a fortune off jukeboxes—and organized crime
byAllan Levine
Playing Defense
Before acclaimed criminal attorney Samuel Leibowitz earned a national reputation defending everyone from Al Capone to the Scottsboro Boys, he represented small-time crooks like ‘Izzy the Goniff’ and used his knowledge of gefilte fish to win a client’s acquittal
byAllan Levine
The Brief Reign of ‘Kid Dropper,’ the Lower East Side Gang Leader
At 28, Nathan Kaplan was a legend. Four years later, he was dead.
byAllan Levine
The Ruthless Racketeer
In the annals of crime in New York City no one was feared more than Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter, who ordered the murders of dozens of men
byAllan Levine
The Beer Baron of the Lower East Side
Dubbed ‘one of the Prohibition era’s most sinister underworld figures,’ Waxey Gordon spent decades as a thief, gangster, tax cheat, and bootlegger before dying in prison
byAllan Levine
The ‘Firebug Brotherhood’ of the Lower East Side
For Isaac Zuker and other arsonists, defrauding insurance companies was a normal part of doing business in the late 1800s
byAllan Levine
The Gangster Who Defended the Unions—With a Lead Pipe
‘My heart lay with the workers,’ said ‘Dopey Benny’ Fein, expert organizer and ‘shtarker’ of the Lower East Side
byAllan Levine
‘Marm’ Mandelbaum: Queen of the Fences
Overseeing an army of thieves and pickpockets on the Lower East Side in the late 1800s, she was ‘as adept in her business as the best stock-broker in Wall Street’
byAllan Levine
The Hectic, Violent, and Relatively Short Life of Big Jack Zelig
The Lower East Side gangster would shake down shopkeepers before saving elderly Jews from harassment
byAllan Levine
The Lower East Side Madam
‘Mother’ Rosie Hertz ran a network of brothels in the early 1900s and spent years paying off corrupt cops—until she finally ended up behind bars
byAllan Levine
A Jew on Death Row
The tragic case of Pesach Rubenstein, sentenced to die in 1876 after a sensational murder trial
byAllan Levine
Little Shop on the Prairie
A century ago, Jewish immigrants in western Canada found a niche operating general stores in rural towns. My grandfather was one of them.
byAllan Levine
The Lower East Side Riot
More than a century ago, police officers beat a crowd of Jewish mourners during a rabbi’s funeral procession—an event the Yiddish newspapers described as resembling a Russian pogrom
byAllan Levine
Burton Family Chronicles
How a wealthy German Jewish family went from the society pages to front-page news after a 1943 murder and the subsequent sensational trial
byAllan Levine
Out of Ghetto Streets
When Jewish immigrants came to Canada a century ago, they weren’t always welcomed with open arms
byAllan Levine
The Man Who Made Jewish History in Canada—Twice—and Was Then Forgotten
George Benjamin broke barriers as an elected official, newspaper editor, and leader of a Protestant organization
byAllan Levine