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Indlæser... The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice (2020)af David Hill
   Ingen Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.  Dorritt | Mar 1, 2022 |    ) loraineo | Aug 15, 2021 | Along the way we learn of connections with Vegas and Cuba as well as references to the Kennedy and Clinton families. This is a tale full of drugs and alcohol, broken families and politicians focused on how they can take over the town and avoid the long arm of the state and federal government. Peyton Place meets the Godfather with some Valley of the Dolls thrown in along the way – and it’s all true. (  ) dbsovereign | May 1, 2021 | ) muddyboy | Feb 5, 2021 | ) Menshevixen | Oct 13, 2020 |
From about 1870 until 1967, when the reformist governor Winthrop Rockefeller shut off the vice spigot, the town’s chief municipal expression was a wink. The mayors winked. The cops winked. The preachers winked, or at least averted their gaze. Winking was how a Bible Belt town of 28,000 (circa 1960) attracted upward of five million visitors per year and why, as Hill writes, on any given Saturday night, there may have been “no more exhilarating place to be in the entire country.” ... Hazel’s story, as “The Vapors” progresses, provides the emotional ballast, the counterweight to all the good-timey glitz, the darkness behind the neon signs. It gives the book its heft, and its warmth. The mob, Hill writes, turned to gambling after Prohibition partly because it considered gambling, like alcohol, to be a “victimless crime.” Hazel’s story — complex, turbulent, as haunting as a pedal steel solo — serves as a soft rebuttal to that idea, and is the wellspring of David Hill’s achievement here. Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky do make cameos...but the big players are the less-remembered mobster Owney Madden, casino boss Dane Harris and a raft of crooked homegrown pols, judges and cops—with a fleeting appearance by Hot Springs resident Virginia Clinton and her promising son Bill.... The history is fascinating, but what makes The Vapors a compelling—and ultimately heartwrenching—book is the author’s account of his own family, who lived in Hot Springs during the casino heyday. Journalist Hill’s fantastic debut blends true crime and Southern history to chronicle the transformation of Hot Springs, Ark., from a spa town into a hotbed of horse racing, prostitution, and illegal gambling between the 1930s and 1960s.... Expertly interweaving family memoir, Arkansas politics, and Mafia lore, Hill packs the story full of colorful characters and hair-raising events. This novelistic history hits the jackpot. The history of a small town in Arkansas that once rivaled Las Vegas in gambling, booze, and prostitution. For most Americans, Hot Springs, Arkansas, doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but folks who lived in the state from the 1930s to the ’60s knew the place as “the most sinful little city in the world.” ... In highly detailed, novelistic prose, Hill chronicles the rise of the power brokers and their ballot-stuffing control of local and state elections. In 1965, J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Robert Kennedy finally shut it all down. A captivating, shady story about massive, brazen corruption hiding in plain sight. Distinctions
History.
True Crime.
Nonfiction.
HTML: A 2020 New York Times notable book | One of the Chicago Tribune's best nonfiction books of 2020 No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)976.741History and Geography North America South Central U.S. ArkansasLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (3.96)
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Was it the opportunity to travel back through time to revel in the nostalgic mid-century dazzle of cocktail dresses and fedora hats, Friday dances and varsity football, hard-living Hollywood stars, boxing matches, resorts, race meets, fur coats, and spectacular MCM architecture?
Or was it the vicarious thrill of peeking into the internal operations of mid-century mobsters, sans most of the horror? (You can think of Hot Springs as a sort of “Chicago Light”: all the mobsters, none of the Tommy-gun massacres.)
Maybe it's the way better-known historical events and milestones lace their way into the narrative – the role of Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters in laundering mob money, the birth of the amphetamine crisis, the Cuban revolution, Robert Kennedy’s anti-mob vignette, Hollywood scandals, the Little Rock Nine, Bill Clinton, and more?
Am I the only one who had no idea how close Hot Springs, Arkansas came to usurping Las Vegas's crown as America’s gambling destination?
The author cleverly parallels the story of the rise and fall of Hot Springs with the rise and fall of his grandmother Hazel, providing an opportunity for him to tell his tale not just from the point of view of the “big shots” whose names we recognize, but also from the point of view of the innocent citizens of Hot Springs whose lives were irrevocably intwined in the towns’ booms and busts. By the time the Baptists finally manage to shut down gambling in Hot Springs in the 1960, some Hot Springs residents will have emerged as winners, some will have been fortunate enough to emerge unscathed, but others – like Hazel – will have lost themselves in the whorl of alcoholism, drug addiction, petty cons, and lost dreams.
Does it matter what kept me turning the pages? All I can say is that I tore through this in a weekend and have already recommended it to several friends. Informative and fun! (