Gamblers & Gangsters: Fort Worth’s Jacksboro Highway in the 1940s & 1950s

Editorial Reviews

Review

Ann Arnold captured a period in Fort Worth’s not-too-recent history with the keen eye of a speakeasy lookout.

Quentin McGowan, Fort Worth, Texas


Ann Arnold has written a thoroughly delightful chronicle of fort Worth’s last wild ‘n’ wooly era. Anyone who was around in those days remembers reading and hearing about exploding cars, mob hits, and late-night police raids, but Ann Arnold refreshes our memories and provides crucial details that fill in some of the gaps in the story. Move over Chicago and New York, Fort Worth’s gangsters could sling lead with the best of ’em!

Dr. Richard F. Selcer, Fort Worth, Texas


Fascinating-well researched. I learned a lot about the entertainment business of a bygone era.

Bobbie Wygant, Entertainment Reporter at KXAS-TX, NBC-5, Fort Worth/Dallas


(Ann Arnold’s) book . . . is terrific . . . I was there as player-manager of the Fort Worth Cats baseball team.

Bobby Bragan


. . . a gripping account of rampant crime in Fort Worth during the thirties through the fifties, hoodlums, gamblers, murderers, dopers, pimps, and lawmen on the take . . . shooting each other or blowing each other up . . . Ann has captured it all just the way it really was.

Bill Farley, Columnist, Fort Worth Star Telegram

About the Author

Ann Arnold served for thirty-one years in the Fort Worth Independent School District. For fifteen years, she was a history teacher, then eight years as a psychologist/social worker, and then supervisor of 138 mental health workers as program director for the Home-School Coordinator/Counselor Department. Ann wrote five handbooks for the department. Since retirement, she has written, “Psycho Biography of World War II Leaders,” which received first place in Creative Writing, non-fiction, by the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation. She received a bachelor of arts cum laude from Texas Wesleyan College and later did graduate studies at the University of North Texas, TCU, TWU, and Texas Tech. She received the Twentieth-Century Award from the Texas Retired Teachers Association and was cited by the Texas Wesleyan School of Science and Humanities as one of twenty outstanding women graduates of the past century. She also received the Lions International Achievement in Education Award presented by the Eastside Lions Club. A long-time resident of Fort Worth, she and her husband have two sons and three grandchildren.

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