
The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum
The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Saskia Maarleveld
-
By:
-
Margalit Fox
About this listen
America’s first great organized-crime lord was a lady—a nice Jewish mother named Mrs. Mandelbaum.
“A tour de force . . . With a pickpocket’s finesse, Margalit Fox lures us into the criminal underworld of Gilded Age New York.”—Liza Mundy, author of The Sisterhood
A PARADE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
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 bigwigs, 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.
©2024 Margalit Fox (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
-
-
Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
-
A Gentleman and a Thief
- The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue
- By: Dean Jobb
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets the hit Netflix series Lupin in this captivating true-crime caper. A skilled con artist and perhaps one of the most charming, audacious burglars in history, Arthur Barry slipped in and out of the bedrooms of New York’s wealthiest residents, even as his victims slept only inches away. He befriended luminaries such as the Prince of Wales and Harry Houdini and became a folk hero, touted in the press as “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.”
-
-
A great story told at a very leisurely pace
- By appreciative reader on 09-06-24
By: Dean Jobb
-
The Confidence Men
- How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Richard Elfyn
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day, an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby?
-
-
home run as usual
- By thaichicken on 01-17-23
By: Margalit Fox
-
The Cater Street Hangman
- By: Anne Perry
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a maid in the upper class Ellison household is strangled, Inspector Pitt is called in to investigate. He finds a world ruled by strict manners and social customs, where the inhabitants of the Ellison's neighborhood appear to be more outraged by the thought of scandal than they are by murder. Inspector Pitt finds a most unlikely ally in Charlotte, the Ellison's spirited daughter. But as the murders continue, Charlotte and Pitt find themselves drawn together by more than the investigation.
-
-
I really like this book but it's not for everone
- By Ancient Warrior on 03-14-11
By: Anne Perry
-
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
-
-
Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
-
Guilty Creatures
- Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida
- By: Mikita Brottman
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise.
-
-
Mostly Filler
- By Bootless on 08-15-24
By: Mikita Brottman
-
The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
-
-
Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
-
A Gentleman and a Thief
- The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue
- By: Dean Jobb
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets the hit Netflix series Lupin in this captivating true-crime caper. A skilled con artist and perhaps one of the most charming, audacious burglars in history, Arthur Barry slipped in and out of the bedrooms of New York’s wealthiest residents, even as his victims slept only inches away. He befriended luminaries such as the Prince of Wales and Harry Houdini and became a folk hero, touted in the press as “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.”
-
-
A great story told at a very leisurely pace
- By appreciative reader on 09-06-24
By: Dean Jobb
-
The Confidence Men
- How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Richard Elfyn
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day, an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby?
-
-
home run as usual
- By thaichicken on 01-17-23
By: Margalit Fox
-
The Cater Street Hangman
- By: Anne Perry
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a maid in the upper class Ellison household is strangled, Inspector Pitt is called in to investigate. He finds a world ruled by strict manners and social customs, where the inhabitants of the Ellison's neighborhood appear to be more outraged by the thought of scandal than they are by murder. Inspector Pitt finds a most unlikely ally in Charlotte, the Ellison's spirited daughter. But as the murders continue, Charlotte and Pitt find themselves drawn together by more than the investigation.
-
-
I really like this book but it's not for everone
- By Ancient Warrior on 03-14-11
By: Anne Perry
-
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
-
-
Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
-
Guilty Creatures
- Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida
- By: Mikita Brottman
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise.
-
-
Mostly Filler
- By Bootless on 08-15-24
By: Mikita Brottman
-
The Infernal Machine
- A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Steven Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Johnson’s engrossing account of the epic struggle between the anarchist movement and the emerging surveillance state stretches around the world and between two centuries—from Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite and the assassination of Czar Alexander II to New York City in the shadow of World War I.
-
-
Really Emma Goldman bio
- By Richard G. on 09-09-24
By: Steven Johnson
-
Night Flyer
- Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
- By: Tiya Miles, Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she’s a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero. You could almost say she’s America’s Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood. Tiya Miles’s extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that.
By: Tiya Miles, and others
-
Intermezzo
- A Novel
- By: Sally Rooney
- Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret.
-
-
I felt a lot of empathy towards the excellently developed characters.
- By Hanoverian girl on 09-29-24
By: Sally Rooney
-
The Friday Afternoon Club
- A Family Memoir
- By: Griffin Dunne
- Narrated by: Griffin Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good.
-
-
Griffiths phrasing made it easy to listen and absorb.
- By Nancie Keay on 06-17-24
By: Griffin Dunne
-
Gangsters vs. Nazis
- How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America
- By: Michael Benson
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst. Gangland-style.
-
-
What, you couldn’t find one culturally Jewish narrator?
- By Deborah Bancroft on 12-29-22
By: Michael Benson
-
The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau
- A Historical Thriller
- By: Graeme Macrae Burnet
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and perpetually ill at ease, he spends his evenings quietly drinking and surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at a drab bistro in the unremarkable small French town of Saint-Louis. One day, she simply vanishes into thin air and Georges Gorski, a detective haunted by his failure to solve one of his first murder cases, is called in to investigate the girl's disappearance. He sets his sights on Manfred.
-
Fagin the Thief
- A Novel
- By: Allison Epstein
- Narrated by: Will Watt
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob's whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.
-
-
Superb story telling and performance
- By Janice on 03-04-25
By: Allison Epstein
-
Empresses of Seventh Avenue
- World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion
- By: Nancy MacDonell
- Narrated by: Gail Shalan
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination.
-
-
So boring
- By BVJ on 02-10-25
By: Nancy MacDonell
-
What a Fool Believes
- A Memoir
- By: Michael McDonald, Paul Reiser
- Narrated by: Michael McDonald, Paul Reiser
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sweeping and evocative memoir from the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy Award-winning, platinum selling singer-songwriter Michael McDonald, written with his friend, Emmy Award-nominated actor, comedian, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Paul Reiser.
-
-
Those eyes! 😍
- By Linda Lehman on 06-26-24
By: Michael McDonald, and others
-
Long Island Compromise
- A Novel
- By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.
-
-
We need more from Taffy Brodesser-Akner!
- By Ximena Enriquez on 08-31-24
-
Beatles '66
- The Revolutionary Year
- By: Steve Turner
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966.
-
-
Great listen
- By Tad Davis on 07-28-18
By: Steve Turner
-
Soldiers and Kings
- Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
- By: Jason De León
- Narrated by: Jason De León
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers—or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services—are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords.
-
-
Honest and enlightening
- By Amazon Customer on 04-17-24
By: Jason De León
Critic reviews
“Exuberant . . . fast-paced. The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum’ serves up a platonic ideal of the criminal mastermind.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A vivid portrait of Mandelbaum in this rich recounting of her life and times. . . relishes Mandelbaum’s chutzpah while describing in forensic detail how an early American crime boss grew her business. A portrait of a woman who, before the term had even been invented, smashed through glass ceilings to get what she wanted.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Before Al Capone, there was Fredericka Mandelbaum . . . a scrupulously researched narrative.”—The New York Times
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
-
-
Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
-
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
-
-
Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
-
A Gentleman and a Thief
- The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue
- By: Dean Jobb
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets the hit Netflix series Lupin in this captivating true-crime caper. A skilled con artist and perhaps one of the most charming, audacious burglars in history, Arthur Barry slipped in and out of the bedrooms of New York’s wealthiest residents, even as his victims slept only inches away. He befriended luminaries such as the Prince of Wales and Harry Houdini and became a folk hero, touted in the press as “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.”
-
-
A great story told at a very leisurely pace
- By appreciative reader on 09-06-24
By: Dean Jobb
-
Empty Mansions
- The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- By: Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.
-
-
Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
-
The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
-
-
Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
-
The Bishop and the Butterfly
- Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
- By: Michael Wolraich
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks full of names—businessmen, socialites, gangsters. And something else—a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
-
-
Annoying narration of a good story
- By Bev on 04-01-24
By: Michael Wolraich
-
The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
-
-
Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
-
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
-
-
Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
-
A Gentleman and a Thief
- The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue
- By: Dean Jobb
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets the hit Netflix series Lupin in this captivating true-crime caper. A skilled con artist and perhaps one of the most charming, audacious burglars in history, Arthur Barry slipped in and out of the bedrooms of New York’s wealthiest residents, even as his victims slept only inches away. He befriended luminaries such as the Prince of Wales and Harry Houdini and became a folk hero, touted in the press as “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.”
-
-
A great story told at a very leisurely pace
- By appreciative reader on 09-06-24
By: Dean Jobb
-
Empty Mansions
- The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- By: Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.
-
-
Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
-
The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
-
-
Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
-
The Bishop and the Butterfly
- Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
- By: Michael Wolraich
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks full of names—businessmen, socialites, gangsters. And something else—a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
-
-
Annoying narration of a good story
- By Bev on 04-01-24
By: Michael Wolraich
-
Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
-
-
Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
-
Conan Doyle for the Defense
- The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Peter Forbes
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in 1908, the police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater, an immigrant Jewish cardsharp. Though he was known to be innocent, Slater was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor. Outraged by this injustice, Arthur Conan Doyle, already world famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, used the methods of his most famous character to reinvestigate the case, ultimately winning Slater’s freedom.
-
-
Very interesting story. Great performance.
- By D. Frrazier on 07-22-18
By: Margalit Fox
-
A Murder in Hollywood
- The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime
- By: Casey Sherman
- Narrated by: Casey Sherman
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all—a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over.
-
-
Not what you think…
- By christopher j rago on 02-26-24
By: Casey Sherman
-
Eden Undone
- A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II
- By: Abbott Kahler
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise.
-
-
Abslutely enchanting
- By SBL on 10-15-24
By: Abbott Kahler
-
Empresses of Seventh Avenue
- World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion
- By: Nancy MacDonell
- Narrated by: Gail Shalan
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination.
-
-
So boring
- By BVJ on 02-10-25
By: Nancy MacDonell
-
The Black Angels
- The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Maria Smilios
- Narrated by: Gina Daniels
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed facility, dubbed “the pest house” where “no one left alive.”
-
-
Tons of amazing medical American/black history that easily reads like your favorite novel.
- By Infowiz on 01-31-24
By: Maria Smilios
-
The Cure for Women
- Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever
- By: Lydia Reeder
- Narrated by: Sara Sheckells
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, The Cure for Women documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.
-
-
Well organized sadly relevant today
- By UnreliableHeart on 03-18-25
By: Lydia Reeder
-
Oscar Wilde
- A Life
- By: Matthew Sturgis
- Narrated by: John Pirkis
- Length: 34 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.
-
-
Wilde Made Tame
- By Secutor on 11-21-21
By: Matthew Sturgis
-
The Confidence Men
- How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Richard Elfyn
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day, an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby?
-
-
home run as usual
- By thaichicken on 01-17-23
By: Margalit Fox
-
The Friday Afternoon Club
- A Family Memoir
- By: Griffin Dunne
- Narrated by: Griffin Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good.
-
-
Griffiths phrasing made it easy to listen and absorb.
- By Nancie Keay on 06-17-24
By: Griffin Dunne
-
The Crazies
- The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West
- By: Amy Gamerman
- Narrated by: Anna Sale
- Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most locals in Big Timber, Montana learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land—and its newest precious resource, million-dollar wind. Trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, trophy ranchers who’d come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines.
-
-
Brilliantly researched!
- By SHH on 03-26-25
By: Amy Gamerman
-
The King of Diamonds
- The Search for the Elusive Texas Jewel Thief
- By: Rena Pederson
- Narrated by: Erin Dion
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a string of high-profile jewel thefts went unsolved during the Swinging Sixties, the press dubbed the elusive thief the King of Diamonds. Like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, the King was so bold that he tip-toed into the homes of millionaires while they were home, hiding in their closets and daring to smoke while they were sleeping. Rena Pederson, then a young reporter with UPI, started following the elusive thief while she managed the night desk. With gymnastic skill, he climbed trees and crawled across rooftops to take jewels from heiresses, oil kings, corporate CEOs.
-
-
Grew Up In Dallas? This one’s for you!
- By Claire P. on 07-22-24
By: Rena Pederson
What listeners say about The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nancy
- 04-05-25
Excellent cultural history
The author details the economic and social conditions that made the choice of Mrs Mandelbaum, a Jew from Germany, to become a thief on a large scale sensible and possible during the age of the Robber Barons.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Heather Brodt
- 07-25-24
One of the most famous fences of the 19th and early 20th century!
This was an incredible look into a (for me) little known historical figure. The fact that she was one of the most famous criminals of her time blew my mind.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Deborah SSmith
- 10-17-24
That she worked so well in a man’s world
I enjoyed the narration and the story of this Jewish woman as a criminal and a Jewish woman. She was clever.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jane
- 10-02-24
They familial name, Mandelbaum
Very enjoyable! Will recommend to others! Suspenseful! A very interesting historical fiction story! A calming voice for narration!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- sheri a hass
- 07-31-24
History
What a woman! Even though she was a criminal, I loved her! Very interesting great narrator
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Linda
- 08-13-24
Great story
Stick with it - narrator starts flat and self conscience but soon drops into comfort and good story telling. A very interesting time and a great deal of social observation.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cee Cee
- 08-29-24
An astounding an American woman
The narration and story of this very compelling American woman during the Victorian age had me spellbound. I literally could not stop listening. So much information about life in America, immigrants, poverty and her ingenious planning and running of the organization. It was masterful and brilliant.
I kept reminding myself. I never learned this in school, ever. Definitely a book worth a listen!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- PD
- 01-29-25
Fabulous read. I loved this character.
She was one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever read about. Beautifully written.My only concern was that the reader spoke too quickly for me to catch all the facts After I slowed down the speed just a bit it was much better.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Glen Kuniyuki
- 10-13-24
An unimpressive biography
It’s an interesting story about a notorious crime boss but the presentation was simplistic and parts of this were mediocre. On some chapters the narrator just rambled on emotionlessly. On those chapters it was both boring and dry.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nadia Boz
- 02-25-25
Boring
There are so much facts, dates, name, and overall history that it is difficult to follow. However, their is nothing interesting or exciting about the main character herself, all the story is “ a matter of facts”.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!