History of the New York Mafia

Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, 1957.  Photograph by Phil Stanziola, New York World-Telegram & Sun.  Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Cosa Nostra.  The Five Families.  The Mafia.  The wiseguys have been muses for some of our greatest artists from Martin Scorsese to David Chase.  Films and cable dramas have etched compelling images of these gangsters into our popular culture.

But the mob was a fact of life for twentieth-century New Yorkers, too.  Mafiosi were intertwined in the economy, neighborhoods and nightlife of Gotham.  Long neglected by professional historians, recent research has deepened our understanding of this extraordinary crime syndicate.  If you’ve ever wanted to take a serious look at the Mafia, this course is for you.

This course seeks to demythologize the Mafia, and put it squarely back into the history of New York City.  We will compare the verisimilitude of “mob history” (often spun by gangsters themselves) with the factual record.  The course will look at how the Families skimmed profits in everything from gambling to gay bars, narcotics to labor racketeering.  We will also look at the downfall of the New York Mafia in the 1980s and ‘90s, going beyond the well-publicized prosecutions.  The course will give you fresh perspectives on both the Mafia and the City.

Wednesdays, 5:30-7:00 PM
January 29, February 5, 12, 19, 2025
$150 (4 sessions)

Meet your instructor

Alex Hortis

Alex Hortis is the author of The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York (2014).  “If there’s a better book on the early history of Cosa Nostra in America, I haven’t seen it,” wrote veteran mob reporter Jerry Capeci.

Hortis is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where he studied under Dr. James B. Jacobs, the foremost academic expert on the Mafia.  Hortis’s research on the Mafia has been published in academic journals, and quoted by Malcom Gladwell in The New Yorker.