

The modern drug war started with Arnold Rothstein - Vigier
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/01/meet_americas_first_drug_dealer_arnold_rothsteins_wild_real_life_1920s_sopranos_story/

======
rl3
> _" Every copy of his wife’s memoir seemed to have disappeared. Even the copy
> at the New York Public Library had vanished sometime in the 1970s. I
> eventually tracked down what seems to be the only remaining copy, in the
> Library of Congress, ..."_

Assuming it hasn't already been digitized, this seems like a minor historical
emergency.

~~~
dalke
He married Caroline Greenwold
[https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FFT4-FVG](https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FFT4-FVG)
.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=qLXytSDc5YIC&pg=PA202&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=qLXytSDc5YIC&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=Caroline+Rothstein+memoir&source=bl&ots=UfS3VOTGO5&sig=ooKuwGESAJAiRlLD9sviTX-
FTU8&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=hAf0VJemO-X5yQPjyYGgBQ&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Caroline%20Rothstein%20memoir&f=false)
says the memoir was published in 1934. ("Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand
Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation" by Lamb.)

[https://books.google.com/books?id=6nSAnkWiy_IC&pg=PA103&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=6nSAnkWiy_IC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=Caroline+Rothstein+memoir&source=bl&ots=nM0Dxl-
maT&sig=PfrqHWMcWJaXr9l7zJtgqagawek&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=hAf0VJemO-X5yQPjyYGgBQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Caroline%20Rothstein%20memoir&f=false)
has an excerpt from the memoir. ("Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of
the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series" by David Pietrusza)

[https://books.google.com/books?id=b-uFZl4g8ZkC&pg=PT234&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=b-uFZl4g8ZkC&pg=PT234&lpg=PT234&dq=Caroline+Rothstein+memoir&source=bl&ots=UzlRbaq7fw&sig=c9hI7YGpmfnl229vcuSONO3JPYg&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=hAf0VJemO-X5yQPjyYGgBQ&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=%20memoir&f=false)
says "As Mrs. Carolyn Rothstein Behar, she granted Fox Film a $2,500 option on
the rights to a memoir she proposed to write on her life with the man Damon
Runyon dubbed "The Brain."" ("Spencer Tracy", by James Curtis)

However, despite all that information, I am unable to find that memoir in the
Library of Congress or Worldcat.

On the list of historical emergencies, this is very low.

------
_cudgel
I'm in the process of reading this book, and am well past the excerpted part.
I think this headline is very misleading.

Rothstein didn't start anything -- he _responded_ to a situation created by
Harry Anslinger. Anslinger created the situation out of a need to secure
funding for his operation, and what appears, to my reading, to be a healthy
dose of both racism and religious fervor.

~~~
dang
Since you've read more of the material, can you please suggest an accurate and
neutral title?

~~~
_cudgel
A shortened version of the title at Salon would be, to me, more accurate and
neutral: "America's First Drug Dealer: Arnold Rothstein"

I don't particularly care for Salon's subtitle, though. It paints a picture of
the drug war as being started by the drug dealers, as does the headline on HN.
It was certainly not: It took the US Congress to outlaw narcotics in the first
place, and Anslinger's involvement to scare the public to the point that a war
was truly begun. The criminal element that moved into this newly created
environment were clearly opportunists who seemingly didn't realize there was a
war at all.

Truly, it's a tragic story. If addiction has touched your life in any way,
this book is a worthwhile read.

------
bko
> And I was going to see that, like Rothstein, Harry Anslinger is reincarnated
> in ever-tougher forms, too. Before this war is over, his successors were
> going to be deploying gunships along the coasts of America, imprisoning more
> people than any other society in human history, and spraying poisons from
> the air across foreign countries thousands of miles away from home to kill
> their drug crops. The key players in the war continue to be either
> Anslingers or Rothsteins—the prohibitionist and the gangster, locked
> together in a tango unto the far horizon. The policy of prohibition summoned
> these characters into existence, because it needs them. So long as it lives,
> they live.

I wonder why this message is so hard for policy-makers to understand

------
GigabyteCoin
It's an interesting writeup by salon.com for sure... I enjoyed it so much that
I read the entire Wikipedia article on Rothstein as well, which reads very
differently than the article.

He wasn't randomly shot because of his gangsterism prowess, he lost $320,000
in a supposedly crooked poker game and refused to pay up.

His nickname "the brain" was one of his many, apparently.

I find the salon article to be outlandish in the many claims it makes, which
based solely on one man's interpretation of Rothstein's wife's memoir.

Still a fun read, though.

------
adventured
Rothstein was a classic psychopath. All the tell-tale attributes are there.
The article is confused, in wondering how he got "this" way - he was born that
way.

"I learned that when he laughed the laughter was a surface demonstration, a
combination of the movement of face muscles synchronized with a sound,
counterfeiting, but not partaking of, hilarity"

"His father—who had witnessed his toddler son standing over his sleeping
brother with a knife"

