Reid, Ed and Demaris, Ovid. The Green Felt Jungle. Montreal: Pocket Books, 1964. 241 pages.

It wasn't until Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings in more than a dozen cities in the early 1950s that organized crime was given any visibility in postwar America. In 1943 the Mafia helped the OSS liberate Sicily from Mussolini, who had little tolerance for any competition. After the war the Mafia was as strong as ever, but not as conspicuous in the U.S. as they were in earlier decades. One center of Mafia activity in the U.S. was the Chicago- Hollywood-Vegas connection. After Bugsy Siegel was blown away in 1947, the mob began taking over Las Vegas in earnest, buying off the authorities as needed. Legalized gambling made for high profits (particularly when an unreported percentage was skimmed off the top), and casinos were excellent for laundering money.

The authors of this book are ex-newspapermen; Ed Reid worked for Hank Greenspun, publisher-editor of the Las Vegas Sun. In this bestseller they name all the names -- an appendix (pages 221-234) lists the 250 licensed owners of 15 major casinos. This book is out of date by now, particularly since Howard Hughes began buying out the Mafia's interest in Las Vegas several years after it was published. But it's a valuable reference for those who are still trying to uncover postwar American history.
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