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Rating: 
Summary: Arnold Rothstein--A Lonely Man
Review: After reading David Pietrusza's book on Arnold Rothstein I have come to the conclusion that Rothstein was a man with only one love in his life, that of gambling. He doesn't appear to be an individual who was able to develop any genuine feelings of affection to another human being. Any interest in another person was limited to what they were able to do for Arnold. His only interest in sports was limited to what the gambling odds were. Although married he spent his evenings, not at home, but sitting at a table at Lindy's Restaurant conversing with business associates, not friends. The author also relates Rothstein's role in developing the drug trade in America. Gambling and bootlegging were activities that you need not be embarrassed about. Trafficing in drugs, however, was something that was considered dirty and he masked his interest in the drug trade. The book also goes into detail of Rothstein's role in the 1919 World Series and others involved in the crooked World Series. Details of Rothstein's death by shooting in the Park Central Hotel in New York by George McManus are also provided. The author admits that some of the details are speculation, and will never be known for sure. This is a book that will take you back to the era of turn of 20th century New York and through the 1920's. It is also the story of people from the world of sports, theatre, politics, and the gangsters that made up this time period. The book is most certainly worth your time and money.
Rating:
Summary: Arnold Rothstein--A Lonely Man
Review: After reading David Pietrusza's book on Arnold Rothstein I have come to the conclusion that Rothstein was a man with only one love in his life, that of gambling. He doesn't appear to be an individual who was able to develop any genuine feelings of affection to another human being. Any interest in another person was limited to what they were able to do for Arnold. His only interest in sports was limited to what the gambling odds were. Although married he spent his evenings, not at home, but sitting at a table at Lindy's Restaurant conversing with business associates, not friends. The author also relates Rothstein's role in developing the drug trade in America. Gambling and bootlegging were activities that you need not be embarrassed about. Trafficing in drugs, however, was something that was considered dirty and he masked his interest in the drug trade. The book also goes into detail of Rothstein's role in the 1919 World Series and others involved in the crooked World Series. Details of Rothstein's death by shooting in the Park Central Hotel in New York by George McManus are also provided. The author admits that some of the details are speculation, and will never be known for sure. This is a book that will take you back to the era of turn of 20th century New York and through the 1920's. It is also the story of people from the world of sports, theatre, politics, and the gangsters that made up this time period. The book is most certainly worth your time and money.
Rating:
Summary: A Splendidly Researched Work, Told by a Keen Craftsman
Review: Arnold Rothstein was a real scum ball, but extremely clever, ruthless and amoral, too. The author deserves great credit for bringing him, and the crime-infested era that he lived in, to life. I was surprised to learn that Rothstein funded the first Drug Cartel in this country during the 20s. He also gave another sinister character, Meyer Lansky, his start up the crime ladder. This book also fully captures the take-no-prisoners politics, the changing economics, and the evolving popular culture of that roaring epoch. I particularly liked how "The Great Mouthpiece," attorney Bill Fallon of NYC, was portrayed and the description of his legal exploits, in the court room, on behalf of some of the most notorious defendants in crime history. Rothstein's main claim to infamy will forever be that he was the fixer of the 1919 World Series. For that damnable offense alone, (a crime against the American dream), he deserved to languish in the deepest parts of a fiery hell. Kudos to author David Pietrusza for a splendidly researched work, told by a keen craftsman of his art.
Rating:
Summary: Spend Some Time With a Criminal Genius
Review: As a baseball fan, I can tell you that David Pietrusza's "Rothstein" is a fascinating look into the Black Sox scandal. Most other books look at the 1919 World Series from the point of view of the ballplayers and fans, but this book looks at the series from the perspective of the criminals behind the scenes. But this book is so much more. Rothstein was New York's criminal genius of late 1910's and early 1920's, and was involved in a wide web of criminal activities. Pietrusza gives you glimpses into Rothstein's childhood memories, everyday life, and many of the biggest fixes and "businesses" that Rothstein set up. Along the way, Pietrusza describes the city leadership and police force of the time, making it a bit easier to understand how the man who bankrolled the biggest crimes in New York-the same man who shot three policemen-could have died without having any fingerprints in police files! Pietrusza writes clearly and cleanly, with attention to detail but a focus on the story. I fully recommend this book to anyone who would like to step back into 1919 and walk with one of the people who shaped that world.
Rating:
Summary: Spend Some Time With a Criminal Genius
Review: As a baseball fan, I can tell you that David Pietrusza's "Rothstein" is a fascinating look into the Black Sox scandal. Most other books look at the 1919 World Series from the point of view of the ballplayers and fans, but this book looks at the series from the perspective of the criminals behind the scenes. But this book is so much more. Rothstein was New York's criminal genius of late 1910's and early 1920's, and was involved in a wide web of criminal activities. Pietrusza gives you glimpses into Rothstein's childhood memories, everyday life, and many of the biggest fixes and "businesses" that Rothstein set up. Along the way, Pietrusza describes the city leadership and police force of the time, making it a bit easier to understand how the man who bankrolled the biggest crimes in New York-the same man who shot three policemen-could have died without having any fingerprints in police files! Pietrusza writes clearly and cleanly, with attention to detail but a focus on the story. I fully recommend this book to anyone who would like to step back into 1919 and walk with one of the people who shaped that world.
Rating: 
Summary: A trip back to Broadway in the Roaring ¿20s
Review: Rothstein tells the story of the underside of the glitzy Broadway that reigned from the turn of the century to the end of the 1920s. Arnold Rothstein is best remembered today as the man behind the 1919 World Series fix, but that was just one example of A. R.'s greatest ability, putting himself in a position where he could not lose. He got into nearly every conceivable area of crime and knew just when to get out, or exactly who to pay off to keep the income coming. He knew what the odds were when a sucker veered from this path, yet "The Big Bankroll" met his end after losing too much at cards and then refusing to pay his debt. Author David Pietrusza, who did a similarly masterful job with Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, helps the reader return to a world where mobsters, athletes, Tammany Hall politicians, and Broadway actresses rule the city. Everyone else better get out of the way, turn their head, or put out their hand for a bribe. Pietrusza's research is exhaustive and brings about new conclusions on Rothstein-including significant forms of income few ever knew about in his lifetime-and hands us A. R.'s killer in a 75-year-old unsolved murder case. The author even provides a preface that introduces the many underworld characters involved in the story, as well as an epilogue that tells the reader what happened to everybody after A. R. got his.
Rating:
Summary: Gambler, Gangster and Everybody's "Fixer"
Review: The life and times of the early twentieth century gangster, gambler and "fixer," Arnold Rothstein, this book takes us back to an era when gambling was still king in the newly consolidated city of Greater New York (created out of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn as well as the townships that filled Queens and Staten Island in 1898). Rothstein came of age within this milieu, a man of vision and immense skill with numbers, as well as a remarkably huge moral blindspot. But in this last he was not alone as he existed in an environment of amoral excess, a time when politics in the city was characterized by widespread Tammany Hall corruption and dominance and when the police chiefs of the period were also numbered among the crime lords, running or sharing in the proceeds of gambling halls and houses of prostitution.
Round about 1914, with the murder of one of Rothstein's gambler cronies by a high police official who was notoriously brutal and crooked, the situation changed and reform politics took hold. This drove gambling and prostitution into the shadows though, inevitably, they didn't just disappear. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the shrewd gambling maven, Rothstein, altered his operations, moving some of his gambling business out to Long Island and bankrolling floating games (which demanded less police collaboration in order to remain in operation) in Manhattan itself.
With the advent of World War I, followed by Prohibition, Arnold Rothstein saw new prospects and began backing bootleggers, giving the start to famous gangland kingpins like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. Rothstein, however, managed to always keep himself behind the scenes, the go-to guy for police and politician fixing, and for financing new crime ventures. All the while he lived the high life of a gambler (albeit with abstemious eating habits), prone to natty dressing with a penchant for playing the horses. (He even built his own stable of thoroughbreds at one point.) As rum-running began to be phased out, with the impending repeal of Prohibition, Arnold secretly bankrolled the illicit drug industry, again orchestrating the growth of new forms of organized crime.
A contemporary of men like Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond and Owney Madden, Rothstein was a one-man show, rather than a gang leader. But he was the brain and bankroll behind the growth of many of these gangs, a virtual gangland cash cow and master manipulator of others. He's best known, today, for having engineered the fixing of the 1919 World Series, though no one was ever able to definitively link him to the operation at the time. This book does a yeoman's job of laying out the complexities of that story but fails, in the end, to really make the "fix" crystal clear. In 1928, with his luck on the wane, Rothstein was shot to death by an unknown assailant when he went to a hotel room to discuss a large gambling debt he had incurred.
No one ever got nailed for that killing, either, but this book makes an interesting case for what might have happened and why. In the end Rothstein died more or less friendless and estranged from his Catholic ex-wife and his east European Jewish family, having been reluctantly written off by his pious father, known in his community as "Abraham the Just." Rothstein seems to have been a man who took the path he did at least in part out of a sense of revolt against his father's piety and religious convictions (and a delight in proving again and again that he was much cleverer than his contemporaries). At the same time, he was always seeking to live up to his father's reputation as a problem solver for others. But Rothstein solved the problems of gangsters, gamblers and crooked politicians, a very different community than the one in which his father, Abraham, had moved.
In the end, this book provides a lot of useful information and a powerful picture of early twentieth century New York City. But we don't come away knowing as much about Rothstein as we might like. An enigma to his contemporaries, he seems to have remained that, even to posterity, and this book does not do enough to alter that fact, even now.
SWM
Rating:
Summary: Rothstein: A master criminal of the Jazz Age
Review: This is a wonderful book, evocative of the Roarin' Twenties. Grab your fedora and get ready to join Mr. Big in his private booth at Lindy's. "Rothstein" is a journey back in time through this well-researched and well-written account by David Pietrusza. Obviously it's a biography about gambler and fixer par excellence, Arnold Rothstein, variously known as The Big Bankroll, Mr. Broadway, The Brain. He is the mastermind who is credited with rigging the 1919 World Series that became known as the Black Sox scandal. But this book is much, much more. Pietrusza transports you to those days of yesteryear in Manhattan in which Damon Ruynon's guys and dolls frolicked and boozed. It was an era of Prohibition, chorines and hoods with colorful nicknames. The Jazz Age may have become glorified, but it was a deadly serious time for this dapper mobster, with the emphasis on deadly. After all, he also was the overlord behind what became the modern American drug trade. The author details the complexities behind the Big Fix of the Chicago White Sox and breaks new ground in how it actually happened. As Pietrusza notes, this was "the ultimate corruption of American heroism, period." He also solves the murder of Rothstein in clarifying detail. A.R. is pictured as the creator of organized crime, involved in bootlegging, bookmaking, loan sharking, fencing, Wall Street and real estate manipulation and, of course, all forms of gambling from craps and cards to the race track. As the book's subtitle claims, Rothstein was indeed a criminal genius.
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