Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers | 
| Author: Gus Russo
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 53748
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 640
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 1596912111
Dewey Decimal Number: 340
EAN: 9781596912113
ASIN: 1596912111
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
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Product Description
The widely praised and meticulously researched book that reveals the story of how, for fifty years, superlawyer Sidney Korshak and the nefarious Chicago Outfit pulled the strings of American business, politics, and society.
Investigative reporter Gus Russo returns with his most explosive book yet, the remarkable story of the “Supermob”—a cadre of men who, over the course of decades, secretly influenced nearly every aspect of American society. Presenting startling, never-before-seen revelations about such famous members as Jules Stein, Joe Glaser, Ronald Reagan, Lew Wasserman, and John Jacob Factor—as well as infamous, low-profile members—Russo pulls the lid off of a half-century of criminal infiltration into American business, politics, and society. At the heart of it all is Sidney “The Fixer” Korshak, who from the 1940s until his death in the 1990s was not only the most powerful lawyer in the world, according to the FBI, but the enigmatic player behind countless twentieth century power mergers, political deals, and organized crime chicaneries.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 A Peek Under the Covers November 13, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
America loves mob melodramas, guys getting whacked because they crossed somebody or other. No one much cares whether the culprits get caught since it's all part of the underworld game. No one in authority much cares either, that is, until some hoodlum tries to beat his income tax after the gov't has demanded its cut. Then the bloodhounds of the IRS come calling and the careless capo gets a federal number.
Economists call the early stages of capital accumulation "primitive accumulation". Few academics may call 20's style bootlegging primitive accumulation, but illegal whiskey sure raised a lot of money for the Capone-led Chicago gang. And like most rising business ventures, much of that money was used by astute managers such as Murray "The Camel" Humphreys to buy influence into the over-world of politics and law. What does it matter if the money's dirty, since it's still money, as any number of corrupted Illinois officials shows.
But what happens when even a big city like Chicago becomes too small for the sums flowing into gangster coffers. Well. if you're a wizard like Humphreys, you start looking for new opportunities, especially where there is little or no competition. You also look for somebody who can pass for respectable, since you're past the primitive stage and now have the money to go legit. Enter attorney Sidney Korshak, discreet, smooth, and, above all, a protege of Jake Arvey, Chicago's master ward healer and political go-between. As Russo's lengthy account shows, the mob could not have made a better choice.
Horace Greeley's famous directive was to, "Go West, young man," and that's just where Korshak took the mob money and contacts, helping to turn dusty Las Vegas into the underworld's Glitter Gulch, and Los Angeles real estate into a permanent citadel of mob influence. Along the way, he picked up such powers in their own right as MCA's talent impresario Lew Wasserman and Democratic party power-broker Paul Ziffren, along with numerous union bigshots. Together, theirs was an underworld shadow cast across two big states with a network of contacts reaching all the way to the nation's capital.
But muscling in at the top means knowing how to cut deals with others at the top. Here Korshak proves to be the guy to go to whether the public knows his name or not. Want top talent for your TV show, see Sid; want no union trouble at the studios, see Sid; want a good deal on a tax scam, see Sid; want a big donation for a charity fund-raiser, yeah, see Sid. And all the time, there's the whispering in the background about the guy's connections with other guys, guys with guns. But then, isn't Sinatra's Rat Pack a really cool bunch of Hollywood swingers. Yeah, just ask the public or even President Kennedy.
To me, it's not a pretty picture, all the way from the yawning silence of the LA Times to the hobnobbing with Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan, plus a Hollywood establishment that could apparently care less. Scattered investigations go nowhere, while whistle-blowers like Steve Allen get black-balled for their civic duty. But then, maybe this is just another success story of primitive accumulation working its way to the top and learning to get along, even as the top learns to get along with them. I believe it was Victor Hugo who said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Maybe then, the Chicago mob was just more obvious than those others like old Joe Kennedy, an Irish bootlegger reborn into the white-collar world despite the sinister origins. Disturbing or not, the book is well worth the read.
As a general reader, I'm in no position to gainsay any of Russo"s facts, so I try to keep an open mind toward detractors. It's vital, however, that critics not simply denounce the work in unsubstantiated fashion. Chapter and verse should be cited in order to gain credibility. Of course, the text casts aspersions onto a number of prominent and reputable people, which places a heavy load on both the book and its detractors. Nonetheless, if Russo has to follow the rules, so should the critics.
Enigmatic, yet charismatic! September 13, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sidney Korshak was one of the most secretive of powerbrokers in the 20th century, and this wonderful book finally unveils the secrets.
Dr Peter Teiman
Switzerland
mob, and crime following the Chicago to LA route May 9, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I loved this book - maybe because I knew half the people in it! It is a wonderful (true) yarn of Jewish immigrants settling in Chicago and how the succeeding generation made their way up the financial/political/power ladder, alas on the wrong side of the law. It reads like a novel and I always looked forward to getting to read more, and was sorry when it was over.
Revealing look into a long career as ultimate fixer for the mob. February 17, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Reading the life of Sid Korshack also covers an interesting saga of mob history, involving the creation of Las vegas, the entertainment industry and politics all comingled together, which the mob's hand reached into and used to great advantage for the purpose infuencing their criminal interests. There is a great amount of detail documented in this book, which at times begs belief, at the extent of the connections weaving through this mans life, blurring the line between criminal enterprise and the supposed gatekeepers sworn to uphold the law, who have no trouble acting in concert. Put together in a strong compelling narrative, a great read which flows nicely and has a definite ring of truth to it.
Onvestigating a Jewish Mob in LA/Hollywood February 1, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Mr. Russo has written a book that seems to say that a mob of Russian-American Jews really ran the mob activities during the last century. In this book, he mainly discusses the life of Sidney Korshak, a lawyer working Los Angeles that was called 'The Fixer.'
This was at a time when most of us thought that the Italians, especially those from Sicily, controlled the mob activities in most of the United States. And I don't see any references in this book to various centers of mob related activities such as New Orleans.
Mr. Russo presents an interesting survey of mob related activities, but essentially concentrates on the LA/Hollywood scene. And this could indeed have been the case. It's a ways to go however, from there to considering this to be the SuperMob over the rest of the country, the rest of the crime. Mr. Russo certainly seems to see a major conspiracy running the country. It makes interesting reading.
It is important to remember as you read the book that Sid Korshak was never arrested, never even got a parking ticket (unless of course the were all fixed).
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