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

By David Pietrusza

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

Rothstein (2003) is historian David Pietrusza's biography of Arnold Rothstein, the New York gambler and racketeer suspected of fixing baseball's 1919 World Series. Pietrusza follows Rothstein from his middle-class Jewish upbringing to his role as a banker and organizer of crime in the 1920s, when he financed bootlegging and drug smuggling and helped train figures such as Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. The book closes with his unsolved murder in 1928, linked to debts from a high-stakes poker game.

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• Ryan Holiday: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”