Manhattan Italian emigration. Lucky Luciano established Cosa Nostra in Manhattan, forming alliances with other criminal enterprises, including the Jewish mob, led by Meyer Lansky, the leading Jewish gangster of that period. From 1920–1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize. As in the whole of New York City, Manhattan experienced a sharp increase in crime during the 1960s and 1970s. Since 1990, crime in Manhattan has plummeted in all categories tracked by the CompStat profile. A borough that saw 503 murders in 1990 has seen a drop of nearly 88% to
Aaron Lansky Aaron Lansky Aaron Lansky (born June 17, 1955 in New Bedford, Massachusetts) is the founder of the Yiddish Book Center, an organization he created to help salvage Yiddish language publications. When he began saving books in the early 1980s, most experts believe that there were fewer than 70,000 Yiddish volumes extant. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989 for his work. Lansky is the author of "Outwitting History" (2004), an autobiographical account of how he saved the Yiddish books of the world, from the 1970s to the present day. It won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award. Lansky graduated from Hampshire