Long before the Mafia, Murder Inc, and the African-American gangster, the Irish mob dominated the underground world of organized crime in America. For those Irish immigrants who managed to escape Ireland's devastating nineteenth-century famines, America offered new hope and the promise of a better life. Far from the ideal they might have imagined, the mighty land of opportunity greeted the Irish with a horror almost equal to the one they had left - disease, vice, and death were all a part of daily life. Under these oppressive circumstances, where every man had to fight for his own piece of the pie - and fight even harder to keep it - the Irish-American mobster was born, and soon became a powerful and terrifying force to be reckoned with.
From the "Westies" of New York to the notorious gangs of Boston, Chicago, and Philly, The History Channel traces the origins and violent legacy of America's organized crime pioneers.
