David Pietrusza

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. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs are featured.

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

Rothstein

John Thorn

Pete Palmer

Bob Newhardt Carroll

Reviews the origins and history of the game, explains the different positions, and rates great players, while discussing betting, odds, and current issues

The Next Edition

The Hidden Game of Football

The presidential election of 1920 was one of the most dramatic ever. For the only time in the nation's history, six once-and-future presidents hoped to end up in the White House: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Theodore Roosevelt. It was an election that saw unprecedented levels of publicity — the Republicans outspent the Democrats by 4 to 1 — and it was the first to garner extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. It was also the first election in which women could vote. Meanwhile, the 1920 census showed that America had become an urban nation — automobiles, mass production, chain stores, and easy credit were transforming the economy and America was limbering up for the most spectacular decade of its history, the roaring '20s. Award-winning historian David Pietrusza's riveting new work presents a dazzling panorama of presidential personalities, ambitions, plots, and counterplots — a picture of modern America at the crossroads.

The Year of the Six Presidents

1920

Presents a social history of the United States during the 1920s, a decade of prosperity, Prohibition, Presidential scandals, fads and sensations, controversies, sports heroes, and the stock market crash.

The Roaring Twenties

In these pages Silent Cal Coolidge focuses his famed terse eloquence on the nation's founders, not merely on George Washington's indispensable figure but also on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, Washington's fellow Virginia patriots, the Battles of Bunker Hill, Princeton, and Trenton, Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys, Boston's Old North Church, Methodist Episcopal Bishop Francis Asbury, and the pivotal role Jewish Americans played in winning of our freedoms. No modern president has spoken so much—or so well—of America's providential genesis. Coolidge turns mere history into a history lesson.David Pietrusza, editor of "Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge", is also the award-winning author of "1920: The Year of the Six Presidents", "1960: LBJ vs JFK vs Nixon," "1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America", and "Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius who Fixed the 1919 World Series." Pietrusza has served on both the national advisory board and the board of directors of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation.ALSO BY DAVID PIETRUSZA:"SILENT CAL'S ALMANACK""Calvin Coolidge was one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century and is certainly the most underrated. This book, compiled by one of my favorite historians, will give readers a full appreciation of why Silent Cal's wisdom shines like a beacon through the fog of historical amnesia."—Jonah Goldberg, author of "Liberal Fascism"“David Pietrusza reminds us that decades before the age of the sound bite, Calvin Coolidge mastered the art. But unlike most politicians today, he used few words to say a wisdom-packed mouthful.”—David Stokes, author of "Apparent Danger—The Pastor of America's First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade of the 1920s"www.davidpietrusza.com

Reflections on the American Revolution & the Founding Fathers

Calvin Coolidge on The Founders

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is most famous for his role as the first Commissioner ever to rule organized baseball. But before he came into his legendary position as baseball's final say, Landis already had built a reputation from his Chicago courtroom as the most popular and most controversial federal judge in World War I-era America. Judge and Jury is the first complete biography of the Squire, from the origins of his unusual name through his career as a federal judge and his clean-up after the infamous Black Sox scandal.

David Pietrusza

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