This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies and today for Terry Gross. When we think of organized crime,

we usually picture the godfather, good fellows, and New York tabloid murder stories.

Our guest writer Russell Shorthoops says there were also mob families in countless

smaller cities across the United States, where the picture was a little different.

He knows in part because he grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and his grandfather was a mob

boss there when Johnstown was a bustling post-war industrial city. Today we're going to listen to my

interview with Shorthoops about his memoir centered on his grandfather's colorful life,

managing a criminal enterprise running around on his wife, and creating family havoc which would

stretch across more than one generation. The book called Small Time, a story of my family and the

mob is now out in paperback. It's a well-researched and richly told story from Shortho's

immigrant ancestors overcoming discrimination and grinding poverty to his own father making

some tough choices about how he would fit into his father's life outside the law.

Shortho is a contributing writer at the New York Times magazine and the author of several books

of narrative history, including a book about the origins of New York, titled The Island at the

center of the world. I spoke to Russell Shorthoops last February when Small Time was released in

Hardback. Well, Russell Shortho, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you Dave, I'm happy to be with you.

You grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which today has a population just under 20,000 people.

Tell us a little bit about the place. It was a classic boom town on the east coast. It's now a

rust belt town. It was booming with the steel mills. Mostly, Bethelum steel was still going pretty

strong when I was growing up. At its height, the population was I think 66,000 and as you said,

it's now like 19,000. So it's really in the following so many towns. It's a shadow of what

it once was, but it's still a lovely place to, and I always say it's a lovely place to be from.

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