“Min­neapo­lis is the cap­i­tal of anti-Semi­tism in the Unit­ed States,” Carey MacWilliams, edi­tor of The Nation, wrote in 1946. Yet from the 1920s — 1960s, Min­neapo­lis head­quar­tered two of the coun­try’s most pow­er­ful Jew­ish mobs. As described in Augie’s Secrets: The Min­neapo­lis Mob and the King of the Hen­nepin Strip, they con­trolled large por­tions of the vice, gam­bling, illic­it liquor and land rack­ets from the Mid­west to Mia­mi to Las Vegas, includ­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the nation­al ​“Min­neapo­lis Line” point-spread for book­ies. Their lead­ers includ­ed ​“Yid­dy” Bloom, Mey­er Lan­sky’s best friend, and Davie ​“the Jew” Berman. Min­utes after Bugsy Siegel was assas­si­nat­ed, Berman famous­ly walked with a few men into the Flamin­go Casi­no, Bugsy’s Vegas Dream, and took over. With ​“boy may­or” Hubert Humphrey as over­seer, the sto­ry is like Board­walk Empire, HBO’s east coast Jew­ish mob epic; by way of Far­go, the blood-drenched crime clas­sic set in Min­neapo­lis. Also explained is how these shan­das with shot­guns have been trans­formed, via mod­ern mob­ster chic, into the kind of Jew­ish gang­ster heroes of an Isaac Babel story.