Alan Geik, his sister, an attorney, and their late brother, a New York Police Department detective, were an appreciative, and often amused, audience for this history that has since become part of American folklore.
These same gangsters' battles with Nazi sympathizers are a recurring theme. They relished street brawls with Henry Ford's strike breaking thugs and other Nazi sympathizers on American streets.
The author's late father-in-law, Lou Lenart, the first fighter pilot in the Israeli Air force, tells of organized crime's crucial support of the Israelis in their armed struggle for an independent state in Palestine.