The Vapors
A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice
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Narrated by:
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George Newbern
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By:
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David Hill
About this listen
One of "21 books we can't wait to read in 2020" --Thrillist
A New York Times Book Review summer reading pick
A Kirkus Reviews hottest summer read
A Publishers Weekly summer reads staff pick
The incredible true story of America's original - and forgotten - capital of vice
Back in the days before Vegas was big, when the Mob was at its peak and neon lights were but a glimmer on the horizon, a little Southern town styled itself as a premier destination for the American leisure class. Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, Art Deco splendor, and America's original national park - as well as horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless backrooms and brothels, and some of the country’s most bald-faced criminals.
Gangsters, gamblers, and gamines: all once flocked to America's forgotten capital of vice, a place where small-town hustlers and bigtime high-rollers could make their fortunes, and hide from the law. The Vapors is the extraordinary story of three individuals - spanning the golden decades of Hot Springs, from the 1930s through the 1960s - and the lavish casino whose spectacular rise and fall would bring them together before blowing them apart.
Hazel Hill was still a young girl when legendary mobster Owney Madden rolled into town in his convertible, fresh off a crime spree in New York. He quickly established himself as the gentleman Godfather of Hot Springs, cutting barroom deals and buying stakes in the clubs at which Hazel made her living - and drank away her sorrows. Owney's protégé was Dane Harris, the son of a Cherokee bootlegger who rose through the town's ranks to become Boss Gambler. It was his idea to build The Vapors, a pleasure palace more spectacular than any the town had ever seen, and an establishment to rival anything on the Vegas Strip or Broadway in sophistication and supercharged glamour.
In this riveting work of forgotten history, native Arkansan David Hill plots the trajectory of everything from organized crime to America's fraught racial past, examining how a town synonymous with white gangsters supported a burgeoning black middle class. He reveals how the louche underbelly of the South was also home to veterans hospitals and baseball's spring training grounds, giving rise to everyone from Babe Ruth to President Bill Clinton. Infused with the sights and sounds of America's entertainment heyday - jazz orchestras and auctioneers, slot machines and suited comedians - The Vapors is an arresting glimpse into a bygone era of American vice.
©2020 David Hill (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"With comfortable Southern charm, narrator George Newbern, a Little Rock native, delivers this decades-spanning account of Hot Springs, Arkansas, when it was the uncontested gambling and sin capital of North America.... Newbern reflects the author's easy humor when mentioning the likes of Babe Ruth, mobster Frank Costello, the Andrews Sisters, and even a young Bill Clinton as occasional visitors and performers. A wonderful slice of Americana." (AudioFile Magazine)
“[David Hill’s] fantastic debut blends true crime and Southern history to chronicle the transformation of Hot Springs, Arkansas, from a spa town into a hotbed of horse racing, prostitution, and illegal gambling.... Hill tracks this history through the lives of three central figures: Owney Madden, Dane Harris, and Hazel Hill (the author’s grandmother).... 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.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
“A juicy tale...[David Hill] offers up a huge cast of colorful, mostly sleazy characters, but he focuses on three key players.... Weaving their stories in and out.... Hill unfolds an engrossing history of corruption at the highest levels.... Captivating.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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Story
In Paddy Whacked, best-selling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and seemingly untouchable Southie legend.
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First Half - 4 Stars - Second Half - 2 Stars
- By Lulu on 08-29-16
By: T. J. English
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Get Capone
- The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Jonathan Eig blows the lid off the Al Capone story. Based on never-before-seen government documents and newly discovered letters written by Al Capone himself, Get Capone presents America's greatest gangster as you’ve never seen him before.
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Get this book
- By Jonathan on 05-13-10
By: Jonathan Eig
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The Fighting Bunch
- The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution
- By: Chris DeRose
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The incredible, untold story of the WWII vets who overthrew their corrupt hometown government - the only successful armed rebellion on US soil since the War of Independence.
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epic!
- By jned on 11-04-20
By: Chris DeRose
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Tokyo Underworld
- The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan
- By: Robert Whiting
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans. Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters. At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945 and whose restaurant soon became the rage throughout the city and the chief watering hole for celebrities, diplomats, sports figures, and mobsters.
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A Man with a fork in a world of soup
- By Kindle Customer on 09-01-20
By: Robert Whiting
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The Unwinding
- An Inner History of the New America
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.
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Can't understand the low ratings!
- By Janet Pittman Henley on 05-27-13
By: George Packer
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The Murder of Sonny Liston
- Las Vegas, Heroin, and Heavyweights
- By: Shaun Assael
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On January 5, 1971, Sonny Liston was found dead in his home - of an apparent heroin overdose. But no one close to Liston believed that his death was accidental. Digging deep into a life that Liston tried hard to hide, Shaun Assael treats the boxer's death as a cold case. The result is a riveting whodunit that evokes a glorious and grimy era of Las Vegas.
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Great read
- By Diane Dodge on 09-14-19
By: Shaun Assael
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Havana Nocturne
- How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It to the Revolution
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Havana Nocturne takes listeners back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Thanks to strong ties with the island's brutal dictator, President Batista, the mob soon owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos and launched an unprecedented tourist boom. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others.
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Not for reactionaries
- By sunsolid on 02-17-09
By: T. J. English
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What It Takes
- The Way to the White House
- By: Richard Ben Cramer
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 54 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, exhilarating, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.
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Great political book
- By Hebern on 09-11-20
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The Last Godfather
- The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino
- By: Simon Crittle
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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As head of the Bonanno clan, Joey Massino was the last don, and ran his world with an iron hand - until he got hit with a murder rap, and turned on his own people. Here, for the first time, is his shocking true story - a glimpse inside the world of organized crime that we may never see again.
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the 6th family
- By chris torkelson on 05-16-20
By: Simon Crittle
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West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
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Mafia Summit
- J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedy Brothers, and the Meeting That Unmasked the Mob
- By: Gil Reavill
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In a small village in New York, mob bosses from all over the country - Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joe Bonanno, Joe Profaci, Cuba boss Santo Trafficante, Jr., and Paul Castellano - were nabbed by Sergeant Edgar D. Croswell as they gathered to sort out a bloody war of succession. For years FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had adamantly denied the existence of the Mafia, but Robert Kennedy immediately recognized the shattering importance of the Apalachin summit....
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Something I Didn't Know
- By Kevin on 03-29-13
By: Gil Reavill
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Oh, Florida!
- How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country
- By: Craig Pittman
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Oh, Florida! To some people it's a paradise. To others it's a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these, and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground" - you get the idea.
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A book about the author's political views - boring
- By L. Burney on 03-03-17
By: Craig Pittman
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The Last Gangster
- From Cop to Wiseguy to FBI Informant: Big Ron Previte and the Fall of the American Mob
- By: George Anastasia
- Narrated by: Chris Monteiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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As a cop, Ron Previte was corrupt. As a mobster, he was brutal. And in his final role, as a confidential informant to the FBI, Previte was deadly. The Last Gangster is his story—the story of the last days of the Philadelphia Mob, and of the clash of generations that brought it down once and for all. Convinced that the honor of the "business" was gone, he became the FBI's secret weapon in an intense and highly personalized war on the Philadelphia mob, operating with the same guile, wit, and stone-cold bravado that had made him a force in the underworld.
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Beautifully done! Exceptional.
- By none on 12-15-23
By: George Anastasia
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Mob Rules
- What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman
- By: Louis Ferrante
- Narrated by: Louis Ferrante
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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As an associate of the Gambino family, Ferrante relied on his instincts to pull off some of the biggest heists in US history. By the age of 21, he had netted millions of dollars for his employers. His natural talent for management led Mafia bosses to rely on him. After being arrested and serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence, Ferrante went straight. He realized that the Mob's most valuable business lessons would allow him to survive and thrive in the real world.
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Business Without Order Is A Business Doomed To Fail
- By Fabrice76718 on 05-15-24
By: Louis Ferrante
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Supreme City
- How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Frangione Jim
- Length: 29 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In four words - "the capital of everything" - Duke Ellington captured Manhattan during one of the most exciting and celebrated eras in our history: The Jazz Age. Radio, tabloid newspapers, and movies with sound appeared. The silver screen took over Times Square as Broadway became America's movie mecca. Tremendous new skyscrapers were built in Midtown in one of the greatest building booms in history.
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the background to the NYC we now live in
- By Marcie on 03-05-15
By: Donald L. Miller
What listeners say about The Vapors
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Caroline In Alabama
- 01-24-24
Hot Springs, who knew?
This is a surprising story about organized crime in Hot Springs, AK. The story is well written and performed. I recommend this one to anyone interested in true crime,the South, the people who are born here, and the people who move here. This one is worth the time to listen.
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- Loretta Mansell
- 12-02-22
Hot Springs - Wow!
The Vapors tells the back story of a town I once lived in and still love to visit. Eye opening… thanks for the history lesson.
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- canejacket
- 07-19-23
You don’t need to be from Arkansas
Excellent read. Great characters who were actual people. Great synopsis of the development of LAS Vegas. Whether pro or con gambling the history of Hot Springs is interesting. Begs the question of what Hot Springs could have become.
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- Lynn Baker
- 07-22-20
Loved it
As an Arkansan, it was pure delight to learn more about Hots Springs’ colorful past. Boy, we got some crooked folks down here. I enthusiastically recommend.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Paul Z
- 08-29-20
Great book for Mafia Buffs
This book is a very informative expose on the history of Hot Springs and the decades long connection to the NY and Chicago mobs. Not being aware of what Hot Springs was like back in the day I was surprised to learn that it was essentially the Las Vegas of the time as illegal casinos operated in the open with of course the help of law enforcement and politicians.
I recommend this book to you mafia aficionados I'm sure there is some new info here that you might not know about.
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2 people found this helpful
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- John Whiteside
- 02-04-22
Great Story
Have lived in Arkansas during this period, it was great to hear the details. Hot springs was a great place to go. I remember sitting on a piano bench with Charlie Rich in Hot Springs. He was a lounge artist playing piano and singing. I thought this guy is really good… duh. It was our connection to the entertainment world.
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2 people found this helpful
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- DaWoodster
- 05-23-23
Excellent story and great narrations
The history here is something you don’t find anywhere else. The narrator did an excellent job and kept me coming back to listen. I am only sad because i finished it.
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- Kindle Customer
- 12-08-20
Quite dull
Hot Springs, Arkansas has an amazing history. From the phenomenon of its geological formation, to the singular history of illegal gambling practiced openly in the town.
Unfortunately, the somewhat dry reading of the facts takes this exciting story and presents it as a dull recitation. There are several vividly colorful characters but, again, painted in all one hue. The changes in the town and the development of its residents was told in the past tense, both literally and figuratively.
This could have been a fascinating tale, but the style of the writing and its reading, were disappointing.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Renee Paul
- 01-17-21
Excellent Book
The author tells a most interesting story of how Hot Springs Arkansas once rivaled Las Vegas as the Nation’s gambling capital. The politicians looked away as long as they received their cash payoffs.
I recommend the book for those that like gambling and gambling stories.
Exceptionally well written and narrated.
Mark Paul
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1 person found this helpful
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- JC502
- 11-26-23
This is a MUST READ!
I loved every bit of it. I’ve read it three times and listened three times. I really hope a television is made of this and it stays true to the author’s telling. Well done Mr. Hill, we’ll done!
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