ALL ABOUT MEYER LANSKY

They said he owned a piece of every casino from Las Vegas to London, that his fortune ran to three hundred million dollars, that he once boasted the mob was bigger than U.S. Steel. The truth was stranger and the man behind the legend spent his mornings in a public library with a dictionary open beside him.

In 1974, a courteous old man in matching gray socks walked to a Miami Beach deli where the line never applied to him, trailed by FBI agents who timed their surveillance to his little dog's walks. He was Meyer Lansky: the mob's banker, the financial genius of organized crime, the one boss who never spent more than three months in jail. To understand how a boy from a Russian border town became the Thinking Man's Gangster and how the myth of his millions outran a far sadder reality you have to go back to Grodno, where his name meant "one who brings light."

ALL ABOUT MEYER LANSKY is a fast, immersive, and richly detailed portrait of the underworld's coldest mind: the math prodigy who read history for pleasure, the partner who made Luciano and Siegel rich, the inventor of the modern casino skim, and the patriot the FBI wouldn't listen to and the Jewish state turned away.

Inside, you'll discover:

- Grodno, the pogroms, and the grandfather he worshipped his whole life

- The crap game and the fearless boy Bugsy Siegel who became his other half

- Prohibition, the garage, and the making of "Bug and Meyer"

- The gambling empire: the carpet joints, Havana, and the count room's secret arithmetic

- The legend of three hundred million and the one-bedroom reality behind it

- Israel's Law of Return, the door that closed on him, and a quiet death in Miami

Part of the ALL ABOUT collection: short, modern biographies for readers who want the full story of a remarkable life without reading 800 pages to get it.

One coffee. One sitting. One unforgettable life.