Matthew Black

Matthew Black is a labour and crime historian from Seattle who earned an honours degree in history at Washington. In 2016 the office of James P. Hoffa recruited him to write Dave Beck: A Teamsters Life, on the Seattle union boss who ran the Teamsters before Jimmy Hoffa did. Operation Underworld, published by Citadel Press in December 2022, reconstructs the wartime bargain between U.S. Naval Intelligence and the rackets that controlled the New York waterfront. Charles "Lucky" Luciano, by then serving a long sentence, was approached to help guard the docks against sabotage and to open Sicilian contacts ahead of the Allied landings there in 1943. Black has written for the San Diego Union-Tribune and for Alaska Airlines' magazine, and lives in San Diego with his wife and daughter.