*In Person* EX LIBRIS: The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum

The Providence Athenaeum enriches the mind, inspires the spirit, and elevates public discourse.As an independent, member-supported library and cultural center located on Providence’s historic Benefit Street, the library has welcomed illustrious writers, spirited thinkers, and intellectual community members through its doorsover its nearly 200 years of existenceto engage in reading, conversation, and debate.

Providence Athenæum

Margalit Fox on The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss.

The Providence Athenæum

<h4>The EX LIBRIS program series from the Providence Athenæum features an array of humanities scholars, authors, historians, and thought leaders, illuminating fascinating topics and inspiring the intellectually curious. EX LIBRIS programs take place at the Athenæum in front of a live studio audience and are simulcast via Zoom, as well as recorded.</h4><h4>This is the IN-PERSON event. In-person $5 tickets are exclusively available to members. They include access to a pre-program reception from 5-5:30 and a post-program book sale, if applicable. To register for the virtual simulcast, please click <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/980257585827?aff=oddtdtcreator" title="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/980257585827?aff=oddtdtcreator" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.</h4> Author and NYT obituary writer Margalit Fox unearths the compelling story behind America’s first great organized-crime lord - a nice Jewish mother named Mrs. Mandelbaum.In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth?In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (nearly $300 million today) had passed through her Lower East Side shop. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime,” she planned robberies of cash, gold and diamonds throughout the country.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. Handpicking a cadre of the finest bank robbers, housebreakers and shoplifters, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business.The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum paints a vivid portrait of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with nefarious rogues, capitalist power brokers and Tammany Hall big-wigs, all straddling the line between underworld enterprise and “legitimate” commerce. Combining deep historical research with the narrative flair for which she is celebrated, Margalit Fox tells the unforgettable true story of a once-famous heroine whose life exemplifies America’s cherished rags-to-riches narrative while simultaneously upending it entirely.Book sale and signing to follow.-Margalit Fox originally trained as a cellist and a linguist before pursuing journalism. As a senior writer in The New York Times’s Obituary News Department, she wrote the front-page public sendoffs of some of the leading cultural figures of our age. 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.

The Athenæum's Fall 2024 Season is generously sponsored by the following friends and partners:

In Person EX LIBRIS: The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum

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*In Person* EX LIBRIS: The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum

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In Person EX LIBRIS: The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum