Rothstein: The Life, Times and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series FROM THE PUBLISHER
History remembers Arnold Rothstein as the man who fixed the 1919 World Series - a criminal genius who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of fifty million people - with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe." The model for The Great Gatsby's Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Rothstein was much more than a fixer of baseball games.
Loan shark, pool shark, bookmaker, operator of illegal gambling houses, thief, fence of stolen property, political fixer, Wall Street swindler, labor racketeer, rumrunner, and mastermind of the modern drug trade - Arnold Rothstein was "The Big Bankroll," "The Brain," and "The Man Uptown."
This account of his life is also the story of con artists Nicky Arnstein and Wilson Mizner; crooked cops Big Bill Devery and Charles Becker; baseball's John McGraw and the Black Sox, pols Jimmy Walker, "Big Tim" Sullivan, and Fiorello LaGuardia; ganglords Lucky Luciano, Legs Diamond, Lepke Buchalter, and Meyer Lansky; newsmen Damon Runyon and Herbert Bayard Swope; show business's Fanny Brice, George M. Cohan, and Fats Waller; and gambler "Nick the Greek" Dandalos.
David Pietrusza unearths the canny way Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series - playing all sides off one another so that he alone could not lose - and unravels the mystery of A. R.'s November 1928 murder in a Times Square hotel room.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
Pietrusza, the author of several books about baseball, does a terrific job capturing Rothstein's colorful career and sheds new light on Rothstein's role in fixing the World Series, disputing the standard history, Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out. He convincingly argues that not only was the fix much more complicated than previously understood, but also that Rothstein played the lead, not the supporting role.
— John D. Thomas
The Washington Post
… the prolific baseball writer David Pietrusza offers up a morsel worth chewing over during the long, dark months between seasons … Pietrusza plunges us into early 20th-century New York City's remarkable, Broadway-centered underworld, in which gangsters and gamblers, newspapermen and songwriters, showgirls and pimps, crooked cops and lawyers and theatrical producers rubbed shoulders.
— Warren Goldstein
Publishers Weekly
Writing a biography of the notoriously secretive Arnold Rothstein, a rum-and-drug-running, bookmaking loan shark who became one of the richest men in the world, is a gamble that, for the most part, pays off for Pietrusza (Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis). After a brief look at Rothstein's Jewish upbringing, Pietrusza concentrates mostly on his "business" interests and does an especially fine job of analyzing the involvement of the "Great Brain," as Rothstein was known, in fixing the 1919 World Series. Quick to point out that the fix "was not the perfect crime," the author tracks down almost every lead associated with what is still one of America's most astonishing crimes thanks to how the caper was played out in the public eye. Strong investigative journalism helps Pietrusza make sense of the complex back stories of Rothstein's fathering of the American drug trade and the gambling debt that led to his murder. While seeking to expose the truth behind Rothstein's dealings and death, the author sweeps readers are into the seedy world of Tammany Hall politics, violent mobsters, dirty cops and paid-off judges. While many of these side stories prove worthwhile entertainment, the vast amounts of information needed to explain them allows the reader only glimpses of Rothstein's true personality. Still, while some readers may clamor for a more intimate portrait of the subject, Pietrusza persuades in his assertion that Rothstein really had only one true emotion: greed. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Colorful biography of the crook who served as the model for Damon Runyonﾽs Nathan Detroit and Scott Fitzgeraldﾽs Meyer Wolfsheim. In the wide-open precincts of the Tenderloin and Times Square, Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928), scion of a devout Jewish family, carried the moniker "The Brain." He was also known as "The Great Bankroll" and "The Man to See," pioneer of the floating crap game and the guy who fixed (though it wasnﾽt broke yet) the 1919 World Series. His story makes a (slight) change of pace for baseball writer Pietrusza (Ted Williams, not reviewed, etc.), who notes that the Black Sox were not the only colorful characters in Rothsteinﾽs life and premature death. There were the grafters and grifters, the touts and toughs, the horse dopers, con artists, cops gone wrong, thieves, prostitutes, goons, bootleggers, labor racketeers, gold diggers, chiselers, and killers. Rothstein knew Fanny Brice and her man Nicky Arnstein, Max Factorﾽs bad brother, Herbert Bayard Swope, Lepke, Gurrah, and Legs. He did business with mugs on the way from Lindyﾽs and Belmont to Sing Sing and the hot seat, citizens more dangerous than Runyon ever depicted them. Rothstein was power broker to them all, displaying a cool that once enabled him to sidestep an armed robbery by taking the gunman to a Turkish bath. He played a tricky role in the Series fix, more fully dissected here than in standard histories of the event. His adventures were rife with unexplained, untimely deaths—his own among them. Nobody ever took the rap for Rothsteinﾽs murder, but Pietrusza undertakes to name the perp in prose that recalls the verve of writer Gene Fowler, who used to hang out with these guys. Stick around for the epilogue,which thumbnails the lives and deaths of more than a hundred characters. True crime, evil doings, and monumental double-crossing by the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, and the Machine in a savory account of the legendary bad old days. (40 b&w photos, not seen) Agent: Robert Wilson/Wilson Media
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