Lansky’s Havana: Meyer Lansky, Batista, and the Mob’s Caribbean Casino Dream

Meyer Lansky spent decades learning how to control the odds. In Havana, he placed the biggest bet of his life.In the 1950s, Cuba offered Lansky something almost impossible to find in the United States: legal casinos, wealthy American tourists, government support for luxury hotels, and a political system willing to welcome experienced gambling operators. Along Havana's glittering waterfront, the line between the underworld and respectable international business began to disappear.Lansky's Havana tells the story of that extraordinary experiment. From Lansky's early gambling career and the legendary 1946 Havana Conference to Fulgencio Batista's return to power, the rise of the Hotel Nacional, Tropicana, Sans Souci, and Capri, and the construction of Lansky's greatest Cuban project, the Havana Riviera, James R. Wexler reconstructs the people and partnerships behind Havana's casino boom.Lucky Luciano, Santo Trafficante Jr., Cuban businessmen, politicians, entertainers, tourists, and professional gamblers all moved through a world of nightlife, money, corruption, celebrity, and ambition.But the casino dream depended on something Lansky could never control: the survival of the government protecting it.As revolution spread across Cuba, Batista fled, casinos came under attack, tourists vanished, and the political order that had made Havana profitable collapsed.Lansky had learned how to run the house. He could not control the country.