· 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.

· 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 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.

· 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.

· Rothstein: the father of organized crime, mentor to gangland immortals Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Legs Diamond, Lepke Buchalter.

From the Author
History remembers Arnold Rothstein as the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, the underworld 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." A.R. was so much more—and less. Loan Shark. Pool Shark. Gambler. Bookmaker. Operator of Illegal Gambling Houses. Thief. Fence of Stolen Property. Perjurer and Suborner of Perjury. Political Fixer. Wall Street Swindler. Real Estate Speculator. Labor Racketeer. Rumrunner. Mastermind of the Modern Drug Trade.

"The Big Bankroll" made 1920’s Manhattan roar. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had to invent his own "Napoleon of Crime," Professor Moriarty, "the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld." Arnold Rothstein invented himself, and made fiction pale in the bargain. Rothstein reveals the truth of Rothstein’s involvement in the Black Sox scandal. Rothstein unravels the mystery of the "The Big Bankroll’s November 1928 in a Times Square hotel room—who did it, who covered it up, and why.
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 and Herbert Bayard Swope; show business’s Fanny Brice, George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Billy Rose, 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.

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