Customer Reviews

Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series

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Author David Peitrusza deserves plenty of kudos for his sweeping biography of Arnold Rothstein, the mad credited for fixing the 1919 World Series. In "Rothstein" we have an overview of the man and his times with perhaps too much of an emphasis on peripheral people and events. The reader will be regaled by stories of turn-of-the-century through prohibition era gamblers and big time criminals. Readers will acquire a greater knowledge of the East Coast underworld and some of the prominent figures who walked the line between criminal and legitimate. From casinos, race fixing and high society's degenerate gamblers to crooks both small time and big, "Rothstein" is an excellent account of the times of the famed gambler. Rothstein surely ranks as one of this country's most notorious criminal master minds.
As much as I enjoyed the book I would have liked getting to know the man himself a little better. While readers will enjoy an opportunity to learn what AR, (as Rothstein was sometimes called) did, where and with whom he did it you cannot be sure to understand what made him tick. His childhood and early years are skimmed over while great detail is given his murder and its subsequent investigation. Hopefully someone can come along who will provide a fuller view of Rothstein. For that biographer and anyone interested in a man immortalized by F. Scott Fitzgerald in "The Great Gatsby" Petrusza's book is a must-read. Whatever "Rothstein's faults as a biography, it is still a good read and highly recommended.

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

Tackling the biography is Arnold Rothstein is not like undertaking to deal with the life of most equally known men of even the same time. Rothstein was covered, as can be seen in the bibliography, in hundreds if not thousands of articles of the time in newspapers, magazines, books, and legends. The problem is not lack of words written, but lack of actual knowledge of the subject. Simply put, much of what has been written is legendary, apocryphal, repetitive, speculative or downright false, and it must have been an overwhelming task to wade through the junk to find the goods. Pietruszka has done as good a job of it as likely can be done at this remove.

Further complicating the task is the personality of the subject, in this case a man who was clearly highly intelligent, charismatic, and industrious, but was missing some kind of chip to his personal makeup that would have made him fully human. Judging from the book, AR loved the multiplication of money in any way possible, judging everything and everyone useful or not useful based strictly upon the expected financial return. Associates passed in and out of his life and he had no compunction about lying to them or ripping them off or leaving them hanging out to dry, to take whatever heat might come down in his wake, and he'd pick them back up again if there was money to be made with no personal feelings entering into it. It must have been hard to resist his charismatic pull, but harder to actually like the man.

Before reading this book I had known a little about Rothstein, mostly from the gambling/World Series angle. I had been unaware of his deep involvement in drugs and similar financial adventures. I wonder to what degree some of the crimes ascribed to Rothstein are simply a case of saying that because he was involved in this, with so-and-so, he MUST have been involved in that, with so-and-so. Notably, Rothstein's own little black book of records may well have been `edited' by the cops after it was found, and of course the missing sheets are missing. There seems to have been little actual written proof of much of anything Rothstein did, and there are so many conflicting stories and points of view it is hard to know the man's actual deeds with any certainty.

Rothstein's relationship with his wife stands in complete contrast: the one person from whom he did not intend to make money he put on such a pedestal that he found himself unable to approach her as a wife, as a woman, and of course this created further suffering.

I think that this man was a very one-sided genius, essentially an amoral machine. Pietruszka has done an excellent job of trying to separate fact from fiction of his fascinating subject.

Most people believe that Charles Lucky Luciano is the father of organized crime in this country. When you read Rothstein, you just might come to a different conclusion. This book is a page turner. If you want a real feel for what it was like to live at the turn of the 20th century and right on up through the Roaring 20's, this is the book that will give you a vivid description of the period, the feel, the restaurants, the lifestyle, the corruption, and the seduction.


Here's what I loved about the book:


* Rothstein is enshrouded with intrigue and surprises. A man this powerful and he travels with $50,000 in cash sometimes, and never a bodyguard. What am I missing?


* He fixes the 1919 World Series, and is the only one to walk away with an enhanced reputation. The police, the prosecutors and the Feds can't seem to touch him, or are they on the same side - you decide?


* Is he an evil genius, or just lucky? As he says, "I only bet on sure things?"


* He shoots 2 policemen or did he, and then fixes his own trial - what chutzpah?


* He likes boxing, and so maybe he fixes the Jack Dempsey - Gene Tunney championship fight? The story is all here, in every tantalizing detail.


* He had showgirls by the dozens, and betting parlors to match, not just here but in different cities, but New York was his town.


* He was known to politicians, high society, and even the common man through the newspapers as "The Big Bankroll, The Brain, and The Man Uptown".


* You will meet the major players of the age that Rothstein was a part of. You will meet such luminaries as Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, the gambler Nicky Arnstein, and John McGraw the baseball aficionado.



There's Fiorello LaGuardia, and Gentleman Jimmy Walker, Legs Diamond. Oh yes, there's Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky, and they all come alive in this very readable book written by David Pietrusza who has obviously given his life to studying this period in our nation's history. It's in his blood.


Arnold Rothstein was hedging his bets and investments before hedge funds were invented. If he were alive today, he'd be running an investment banking firm, and changing the name every year. He was always several steps ahead of the law, and other criminals. Back in those days, the police were the criminals; they just wore badges, instead of dark suits.


The book is beautifully written on very high grade paper. There's 387 pages of narrative covered in 24 chapters, accompanied by believe it or not hundreds of footnotes. It's the biography of a criminal and author Pietrusza has footnotes in the book, like he's doing a Harvard thesis.


The chapter titles are very catchy. The author put a lot of thought into grabbing your interest. A couple of the more interesting ones are Nobody Loves Me (chapter 2), I Never Take My Troubles to the Cops (chapter 10, and I Don't Bet on ...Boxing (chapter 16). The chapter headings draw you in and you are compelled to dig into the chapter to find out what it is about.


CONCLUSION:


You cannot possibly understand this chapter in American history without digging into the life of Arnold Rothstein. He is the underpinning to the development of criminal empires in the early 20th century. It all leads from him. Many of the players that would go on to develop their own criminal organizations started out with Rothstein.


Lucky Luciano was a kid when Rothstein started to train him, and although he would be involved in the muscle end of the business in decades to come, Rothstein helped him develop his mind, and taught him cunning, and shrewdness. The same was true for Meyer Lansky who was a teenager when he went to work for Rothstein. Probably everything that Lansky did over the next half century comes from what Rothstein taught him, including how to survive when others are dying around you.


Read the book and be prepared to be mesmerized by the most brilliant criminal mind of the early 20th century. Only just now is he beginning to get his due from authors such as David Pietrusza, and while you are at it, I thank you for reading this review.


Richard C. Stoyeck

Although the 1919 Series is in the title, the book goes beyond that, so if you're a curious baseball fan this book might have more than you are game for. Pietrusza seems to know his New York criminal element of the era, and the books travels down spokes out from the Rothstein hub into these areas, which certainly helps to put Rothstein into perspective, at least from a "buisness" standpoint.

I have uncovered additional info about Rothstein's personality with simple google searches, and in other books; the sources seeming to be reliable. Presuming these are accurate, they do help to supplement what we learn about Rothstein here. That's no big criticism, but the book left me with some unanswered questions about Rothstein's personality -- answers that might or might not be difficult to answer.

Rothstein was not a well-kept secret, even in his era, and there seems to have been enough written about him that I would think it might not be difficult for an author to give us more about his personality. This author choose to focus on dozens of peripheral characters, and if you're a history fan that proves to be illiuminating, but does not always illuminate Rothstein, just places him in a context. Still, readers can argue the "business" of Rothstein and his fellow criminals is the compelling part of his personality, and speaks volumes itself.

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.

David Pietrusza's bio of infamous gangster Arnold Rothstein is a wonderful read. Lots of vignettes involving rip-offs, double-crosses, fixed horse races and rigged trials as well as the hilarious exploits of Rothstein's crooked, shamelessly audacious lawyer William Fallon.

Audacious is also the word that comes to mind when wondering how anyone could even think of fixing the World Series, let alone manage to pull it off. However, as the author notes, some of the White Sox players had been throwing games during the regular season that year so getting them to recruit a few more more players for a postseason fix was not that much of a stretch.

Pietruzsa is on shaky ground though when wondering whether the first Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney fight was thrown. On page 235 he claims Dempsey was poisoned by his bodyguard before the bout but provides no reference for this story. It appears to be a baseless rumor first mentioned in the pages of Roger Kahn's A Flame of Pure Fire.

Without trying to repeat what has already been said, A.R. comes alive in reading this book. He really didn't have many friends, just business associates. His life was all business and that business was making money! He was the ultimate gambler seeing an opening and taking it (no matter who you were - family, friend or foe). A.R. was involved in all types of scams, legitimate and illegal, for the sole purpose of turning a profit. After reading this book - you also find out a few undesirable traits about A.R. such as him being a welsher, and not paying debts on time. He wasn't the most honorable among thieves. This was an interesting characteristic of the book for it isn't one-sided. It gives you the facts about A.R. whether good or bad. This book paints a true portrait of the extent of vice which involved politicians, mobsters, athletes, policemen and of course actors and actresses. There is extensive research with regard to who killed A. R. I found this part of the book to be very interesting to see all the facts and the "behind the scenes" work unravel. It reveals the motives: the who, what, when, where, why and how. The last chapter keeps you very motivated and wanting for more. There were some great quotes from some old timers and I think one can learn a few things from reading this book. The book is recommended to other readers.

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.

Rothstein, by David Pietrusza is an essential read for anyone wanting to understand the creation of modern organized crime. Arnold Rothstein was much more than a gambler or "the man who fixed the world series". He was the financier for the most despicable criminal enterprises, from white slavery to drug dealing. His ingenious method of being the financier for a cut, kept him out of the actual operations, but gave him both influence and filled his pockets with millions. He was a political and criminal fixer without equal and it can be said that it was his skill at negotiating settlements that held back the crime wars that came after his death. He was arguably the most pervasive influence peddler and fixer of the 20th century. He was the mentor and supporter of some of the most famous criminals in American History. Meyer Lansky, Charles Luciano, Ben Seigel, Legs Diamond, Dutch Shultz and many more were mentored, financed and let loose on society by A.R. (as he was called.
In Mr.Pietrusza's biography, this elusive enigma comes to life as a flesh and blood reality. Some of his information is new and extremely enlightening and this book is well worth the read. My only criticism is minor, with some of the logic he uses when analyzing the death of Rothstein. These meet his conclusions, while overlooking some other options that might exist. This is not to say his conclusions are wrong, but merely not as thoroughly thought out as they might have been. But these flaws are to be expected as there is much not available to the historian. Not only is history elusive, in Rothstein's case, where he kept detailed notes and records, much was destroyed to cover up the breadth and corruption that connected politicians, judges, cops, lawyers, gamblers and crooks, local,state and national, that was so vast as to take ones breath away.
Rothstein the book, is, like it's subject, intriguing, revolting, mysterious, compelling and haunting. Like the time in which he lived, Rothstein was a unique product the like of which will never come again. A one-of-a-kind type that was created by time and place and opportunity. He was a genuine genius, it is just a sad tragedy that he turned it to amoral, immoral advancement. If the twenties roared, they roared with the impact of Arnold Rothstein.