The story of the life and times of Arnold Rothstein -- his many criminal exploits in iconic 1920s Manhattan -- is fascinating. Unfortunately this particular book fails to convey the forest for the trees, and what could have been an epic tale gets bogged down with an impossible-to-remember amount of names, court cases, and circumstances. I saved it from 2-star status largely because I don't really blame the author: there's an absurd amount of hijinks to catalog in Rothstein's relatively short life.

He is known to history largely as the mastermind behind the 1919 fix of the World Series. And though this was a crazy enough event -- he actually engineered two separate fixes, then played each party off the other -- it's just one chapter in the life of a criminal who knew nothing except a desire to keep cheating for more money.

If you can think of an organized criminal activity, Rothstein made money off it: illicit gambling, horse racing, baseball, boxing, labor racketeering, drugs. He took advantage of Prohibition by subsidizing a horizontal monopoly of the the liquor trade, from distilleries in England to speakeasies in Manhattan. And at the peak of Tammany corruption, he seemingly had every politician, judge, jury, district attorney, and police chief bought and paid for. All amid the glitz and glamour of Broadway in the Roaring 20s.

That's why I feel like it fell short. I kept getting pulled away from the overarching craziness of the times thanks to references to this judge and that murder or that horse owner from 100 pages ago. Simply too many crimes and criminals to keep track of.

The one (obvious) thought I'm left with is how tame our times are compared with 1920s New York. What I mean is, you had cops killing witnesses, Tammany bosses controlling everything from roaming casinos to who got elected where. Your vote didn't matter. Justice wasn't served. You weren't safe from crime because specially-protected criminals almost never got arrested, those who got arrested almost never got tried, those who got tried almost never got convicted, those who got convicted almost always wen free. And people were just fine with this -- I mean, fine enough to not violently protest.

Then again, our idea of protest today is sitting in publicly subsidized parks playing drum circles and demanding free stuff. Maybe today's criminals are just a lot better at it now.