The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss
By Margalit Fox
Random House, 2025

America’s first great organized-crime lord was a nice Jewish mother named Mrs. Mandelbaum. In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Manhattan. By the 1870s she had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and criminal mastermind. But Mrs. Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful crook: She was a business visionary, one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the scattershot enterprise of property crime.

About the Author
Margalit Fox originally trained as a cellist and a linguist before pursuing journalism. Winner of the William Saroyan Prize for Literature and author of four previous nonfiction books, The Confidence Men, Conan Doyle for the Defense, The Riddle of the Labyrinth and Talking Hands, Fox lives in Manhattan with her husband.

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