The Vapors

 

The vapors : a southern family, the New York mob, and the rise and fall of Hot Springs, America's forgotten capital of vice / David Hill. 394 pgs.

I recently visited Hot Springs and it is a town that gives you the impression that it has seen better days.  Then I found this book that tells the tale of the earlier action.  Hot Springs was once a bigger gambling destination than Las Vegas. Never mind that gambling was illegal, it was out in the open and known by everyone in the state and even federal government.  In a sweep to get rid of the mafia influence, the gambling was shut down in the 60's.  This book shows there was a little bit of mafia influence, but mostly the casinos were run by locals.  The money made was used to pay off people on the state level but mostly stayed local. 

I enjoyed this book that covers the time AFTER medicine came along enough that people stopped believing the hot springs could fix all ailments and how the town reinvented itself from America's spa to America's gambling HQ. An interesting look at a scrappy small city.

Island of Vice

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's doomed quest to clean up sin-loving New York by Richard Zacks  431 pp.

In the 1890s New York was the place that had it all: financial empires, manufacturing, entertainment, the ultra-rich and the destitute poor, as well as crime, prostitution, casinos, corrupt politicians and police under the watchful and corrupt eye of Tammany Hall. Spurred on by the public denouncements of vice by the Rev. Charles Parkhurst, the people of New York wanted a reformation of the city's evil ways. Enter a young Theodore Roosevelt as a new police commissioner. This was a Roosevelt before San Juan Hill and his "big stick." Roosevelt is determined to clean up all that is evil in the city, especially the police who turn a blind eye to the criminal goings-on...for a price. TR does his job well, too well. The people wanted things cleaned up, just not too much. When they lost the right to a cold beer on Sundays, police stations where the homeless could sleep at night, and entertainment at private parties the rebellion against the reformers began in earnest. What started as an effort to clean up the crime problem became meddling in the lives of generally law abiding persons. Soon the people and Roosevelt's own Republican Party turn against his puritanical attitudes and ways are found to get off the Board of Police Commissioners--by getting him out of town and into Washington, D.C. as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. The puritanical zealot Theodore Roosevelt is quite different from the boisterous, outdoorsy, jovial man he is depicted as being during his years as President of the U.S.