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"Terrific"
—The New York Times
***
Edgar Award Finalist
***
Excerpted in
Matt Silverman
and Greg Spira's
USA Today
Sports Weekly's
Best Baseball
Writing
2005                   
   Audio Version a
Winner of the
Golden
Headphones Award
History remembers Arnold Rothstein as the man who fixed the 1919
World Series, an underworld genius. The real-life model for The Great
Gatsby's Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls,
Rothstein was much more—and less—than a fixer of baseball games.
He was everything that made 1920s Manhattan roar. Featuring Jazz Age
Broadway with its thugs, speakeasies, showgirls, political movers and
shakers, and stars of the Golden Age of Sports, this is a biography of the
man who dominated an age. Arnold Rothstein was a loan shark, pool
shark, bookmaker, thief, fence of stolen property, political fixer, Wall
Street swindler, labor racketeer, rumrunner, and mastermind of the
modern drug trade. Among his monikers were "The Big Bankroll," "The
Brain," and "The Man Uptown." This vivid account of Rothstein's life is
also the story of con artists, crooked cops, politicians, gang lords,
newsmen, speakeasy owners, gamblers and the like. Finally unraveling
the mystery of Rothstein's November 1928 murder in a Times Square
hotel room, David Pietrusza has cemented The Big Bankroll's place
among the most influential and fascinating legendary American criminals.


"Rothstein paints a fascinating, engrossing portrait of a modern-day
Professor Moriarity, set in a Roaring Twenties universe of crime and
corruption, violence and greed.  Only Arnold Rothstein dared to fix a
World Series, or his own trial for shooting two policemen. Only David
Pietrusza could have so vividly recreated his life, his death, and his era."
—Dick Thornburgh, former United States Attorney General and
Governor of Pennsylvania

"Arnold Rothstein was the Thomas Edison of modern crime, inventing
much of it and streamlining the rest. Investment houses, credit-card
issuers, and lottery hawkers have been enriched by his legacy. David
Pietrusza's monumental biography of this evil genius is astonishingly
detailed and grippingly narrated; there's a revelation in every chapter.
Only Rothstein could have spun so tangled a web; only Pietrusza,
seventy-five years after his subject's death, could have set it straight."
—John Thorn, sports historian and editor of Total Baseball

"In the words of Michael Stuhlberg, the actor who played him so
superbly in Boardwalk Empire, put it, playing Arnold Rothstein was 'like
putting clothes on a ghost.' David Pietrusza not only puts clothes on the
grandfather of American organized crime but puts flesh on him and
blood in his veins as well. One of the handful of great books on the
history of the Mob."
—Allen Barra

"David Pietrusza's research opens the wonderous underworld that lurked
below the Roaring 20s. Rothstein is witty, amusing, original, and
ultimately very informative."
—Donn Rogosin, author of Invisible Men: Life in Baseball's Negro
Leagues

"David Pietrusza's Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the
Criminal Genius who Fixed the 1919 World Series is brilliant—a vivid,
superbly researched portrait of the boss who ruled Broadway in its
heyday."         
—Kevin Cook, author of Tommy's Honor and Titanic Thompson:
The Man Who Bet on Everything

"Excellent."
—Rose Keefe, author of Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean
O'Banion and The Man Who Got Away: The Bugs Moran Story

"It doesn't matter how much you know or
have researched the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, you must read Rothstein.
Pietrusza pulls it all together and —or the first time—the pieces of the
ongoing mystery saga fall into place. "
—Susan Dellinger, Ph.D. , author of Red Legs and Black Sox
(Emmis Books, 2006)
 It's All Here—
in Rothstein:

  • The amazing, complex story
    of how gambling kingpin
    Arnold Rothstein conspired
    to fix the 1919 World Series
    —and kept out of jail when
    the whole scheme blew sky
    high.
  • Arnold Rothstein's
    mysterious November 1928
    murder. Finally revealed:
    Who did it. Why. And why
    so many powerful people
    found the truth inconvenient.
  • How Rothstein's violent
    death eventually helped
    bring down Tammany Hall,
    the nation's biggest political
    machine—and helped make
    Fiorello LaGuardia mayor
    and Franklin Roosevelt
    president.
  • Millions in stolen bonds.
    The accused: dapper
    conman Nicky Arnstein. His
    wife: Broadway star Fanny
    Brice. The shadowy figure
    behind the crime: Arnstein's
    idol, Arnold Rothstein.
  • How on July 4, 1921 Arnold
    Rothstein won $850,000 on
    a single horse race —and
    had it figured how he would
    make money even if his
    horse lost.
  • How Arnold Rothstein and
    his henchman Abe Attell
    boldly worked to fix the first
    Jack Dempsey-Gene
    Tunney heavyweight title
    fight.
  • Wall Street swindles and
    scams in the Roaring
    Twenties. The bankroll
    behind the crooked
    brokerage houses: Arnold
    Rothstein.
  • Arnold Rothstein's brilliant,
    flamboyant lawyer: Bill
    "The Great Mouthpiece"
    Fallon. How Fallon saved
    himself from jury-tampering
    charges by putting media
    czar William Randolph
    Hearst and his mistress
    actress Marion Davies on
    trial.
  • How Arnold Rothstein and
    Captain Alfred Loewenstein,
    the world's third-richest
    person, worked to create the
    modern international drug
    trade.
  • Arnold Rothstein: the father
    of organized crime, mentor
    to gangland immortals
    Meyer Lansky, Lucky
    Luciano, Legs Diamond,
    Lepke Buchalter.
.

Meet Arnold Rothstein and meet the legends of decades ago—con artists
Nicky Arnstein and Wilson Mizner; legal mastermind Bill "The Great
Mouthpiece" Fallon; crooked cops Big Bill Devery and Charles Becker;
baseball's John "Mugsy" McGraw and the Black Sox; boxers Abe "The
Little Champ" Attell, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and Benny
Leonard; politicians Jimmy Walker, "Big Tim" Sullivan, and Fiorello
LaGuardia; ganglords Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Legs Diamond,
Lepke Buchalter, and Little Augie Orgen; newsmen Damon Runyon,
Herbert Bayard Swope and William Randolph Hearst; show business's
Fanny Brice, George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Billy Rose, Marion
Davies, and Fats Waller; speakeasy owners Larry Fay and Texas
Guinan; gambler
"Nick the Greek" Dandalos.

Rothstein is the epic story of Manhattan in the Roaring Twenties as its
never been told before.

If you've been transfixed by Boardwalk Empire's Arnold Rothstein, now
you can learn . . . the even more amazing rest of the story.
Rothstein has won the Golden Headphone Award and been rated
as One of Booklist's Top Ten, chosen from titles reviewed in
Booklist from June 2003 through May 15, 2004, these outstanding
biographies and memoirs are about individuals, both famous and
infamous, who through their stories reveal much about the culture
and society of their respective eras. have a lasting impact.
Available in tape, CD,
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