Keir Graff neatly sums up King of the Jews by Nick Tosches in his review for Booklist. "His book is sometimes boring, sometimes brilliant, often irritating. Readers looking for a gangster tale will be sorely disappointed--readers who want to know what it's like to live inside Tosches's head will hit the jackpot." I like Nick Tosches's writing. Even bad Nick Tosches is exciting. It may be frustrating, infuriating, head-scratching, pretentious, narcissistic, and manipulative, but there's always a pay-off somewhere in the pages of the book. And most authors are good at eliciting maybe one or two of those feelings with their writing. Tosches knows how to push his reader's buttons. He also knows how to tame some of the strangest non-sequiturs into a connected narrative that gives his subject matter a different sheen. From using the tale of Orpheus to start Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock & Roll to his latest work that meanders through the linguistic history of a monotheist God and dice, the reader never knows where the story will start or end. The flap copy claims that this is "Tosches's sprawling biography of Arnold Rothstein." More to the point, this is a book that features Arnold Rothstein and his associates/ family. It's not a biography in the traditional sense and that is a good thing. Tosches spends the first third of the book deep in World history, riding roughshod over the ancient world and the middle ages to quickly arrive at 19th Century Eastern Europe. The only mention of Rothstein at this point is a few flickers of his person in some legal briefs. Unlike traditional biographies, there aren't any notes or bibliography. The book has no back matter. Then there's the most important deviation- everything Tosches reports about Rothstein he later discounts or contradicts. The reader is left with only a vague impression of Rothstein, not exactly sure what the man did. And that is in keeping with the man Tosches writes about. Rothstein never signed his name to any of his companies. He was never directly connected to any of the crimes that the press, and now history, claim he financed- the 1919 World Series, the crimes of the New York Syndicate. His associates and close friends ended up convicted, jailed, shot but no one ever pinned anything on Rothstein. Even his murder is a mystery. Tosches gives us a biography of a spectre. The reader looking for a book anchored in the facts, they would be better off reading one of the other biographies available- Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, The Big Bankroll. King of the Jews presents a bigger picture which gives Rothstein a place to live, breathe and move. How can we even assume to know the facts of this man, when the police and media of the time couldn't even get an accurate account of his activities? The reader is left with a book that is 50% Tosches, 40% Rothstein and a mix of history for the final 10%. Is this bad writing? Is this good writing? I don't think Nick cares and I don't know if we should either. Like all good writing, the book leaves the reader to tie everything together.