Button man
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 370-371).

"Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough on New York's Lower East Side, until the death of their father forced them to support the family. Morris, the youngest, but the most driven and pugnacious, apprentices himself at twelve to a garment manufacturer; bookish Sol drops out of accounting school; but Harry, scarred by a family tragedy, is lured under the wing of a charismatic crime figure. Morris rises through the factory until, at age twenty-one, he convinces Sol to join him in their own business. But Harry can't give up the glamour and prestige that comes from being a 'button man'--a gun man--for Louis Buchalter, now the most ruthless mobster in New York. And when Buchalter sets his sights on the unions that control the garment factories, a fatal showdown is inevitable, pitting brother against brother"--Book jacket.