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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

U.S.A. Confidential

book by Jack Lait

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 30, 2025
Entity authorityQ7863003 ↗
Source-derived summary

U.S.A. Confidential is a 1952 book written by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer (Crown Publishers). Its theme is crime and corruption. The book is remarkable for early mentions of many who would become infamous, among them Benny Binion and Jimmy Fratianno.

A joint $7.5million lawsuit was filed against the authors of the book by the department store Neiman Marcus and its employees for defamatory statements made in the book. The suit was settled in 1955 out of court, with the Mortimer and the estate of Lait (he having died a year earlier) retracting those positions and paying an undisclosed sum.

Editorial summary

“U.S.A. Confidential” enters the record as book by Jack Lait. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Confidential, book and Jack can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1952, 1955—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Confidential, book and Jack.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“U.S.A. Confidential” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Confidential, book and Jack provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7863003. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1952 and 1955.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “U.S.A. Confidential”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow U.S.A. Confidential primary sources, U.S.A. Confidential archive and Confidential research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “U.S.A. Confidential”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “U.S.A. Confidential” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.