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 This book is out of date by now, particularly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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