WSJ: ‘Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia’ Review: Cracking Down on La Cosa Nostra

From the WSJ: Sure, the mob was brutal if your small business was being leaned on, or you needed 100,000 yards of concrete, or owed money. But most people who needed a loan went to Manufacturers Hanover (or the Bowery Savings Bank, or Lincoln Savings and Loan) and not that many of them were constructing office towers. For the first 45 minutes of “Fear City,” however, we are told insistently—by ex-FBI agents, ex-wiseguys and radio personality Curtis Sliwa in an Albert Anastasia-inspired barber’s chair—how awful the mob was for everybody. But was it? Many, many people went through life virtually unaware that mobsters, outside of the Corleones, even existed.