The model for Meyer Wolfsheim from The Great Gatsby and Guys and Dolls'' Nathan Detroit, Arnold Rothstein was an underworld genius, racketeer, rumrunner, political fixer, and criminal mastermind who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of fifteen million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

David Piertrusza unearths the canny way Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series and unravels the mystery of Arnold Rothstein’s murder in November 1928 in a Times Square hotel room.

Transporting listeners onto Jazz Age Broadway with its thugs, bookies, denizens of the race tracks, showgirls, political movers and shakers, and stars of the Golden Age of sports, this is a biography of the godfather of organized crime in America, who reigned supreme when the fast buck ruled and violence stalked the streets of Gotham.

Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the past narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 reelection landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.

With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR; powerful, but hated newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio host Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.

Crafting his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original, and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at the crossroads. The nation’s stakes were high … and the parallels hauntingly akin to today’s dangerously strife-ridden political and culture wars.

The model for Meyer Wolfsheim from The Great Gatsby and Guys and Dolls'' Nathan Detroit, Arnold Rothstein was an underworld genius, racketeer, rumrunner, political fixer, and criminal mastermind who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of fifteen million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

David Piertrusza unearths the canny way Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series and unravels the mystery of Arnold Rothstein’s murder in November 1928 in a Times Square hotel room.

Transporting listeners onto Jazz Age Broadway with its thugs, bookies, denizens of the race tracks, showgirls, political movers and shakers, and stars of the Golden Age of sports, this is a biography of the godfather of organized crime in America, who reigned supreme when the fast buck ruled and violence stalked the streets of Gotham.

Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the past narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 reelection landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.

With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR; powerful, but hated newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio host Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.

Crafting his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original, and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at the crossroads. The nation’s stakes were high … and the parallels hauntingly akin to today’s dangerously strife-ridden political and culture wars.