The vapors: a southern family, the New York mob, and the rise and fall of Hot Springs, America's forgotten capital of vice

Describes the history of Hot Springs, Arkansas. The author 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.
Before Vegas was big, Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, art deco splendor, horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless bank rooms and brothels, and some of the country's most bald-faced criminals. Hill follows three individuals spanning the golden decades of Hot Springs: from the 1930s through the 1960s-- and the lavish casino whose rise and fall would bring them together before blowing them apart. -- adapted from jacket