Saturday, July 5, 2008

Motor City Machers


Time for just another quick book release worth plugging.

In a somewhat surprising move from Arcadia Publishing, comes Paul R. Kavieff's Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang.
Arcadia is generally know as a publisher of lost Americana, essayed through period photographs with a strong focus on communities, regions and towns in their 'Images Of America' series. While the series usually wax nostalgic of the good old days, it makes this recent release a (welcomed) surprise considering its subject matter

Paul R. Kavieff authored The Purple Gang: Organized Crime In Detroit 1910 - 1945 in 2000, and more recently the first biography on Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter (The Life And Times...) in 2006.

In Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang, Kavieff has gathered up his impressive collection of photographs that trace the violent times of this Jewish collective of prohibition misfits and machers. There's wide variety of great mugs and shlubs; gonifs and gangsters; as well as some artfully composed crime scene photos that await you within these pages. It's worth seeking out for anyone with interest in the Purple Ones' potent contribution to Prohibition-era's kosher crime wave.

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