Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the scienceand erosof gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas
James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harpers to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournaments prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outr it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether.
McManus risks his entire Harpers advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itselfthe players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it.
Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of Americas card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one mans effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called Pleistocene exigenciesthe eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.
James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harpers to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournaments prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outr it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether.
McManus risks his entire Harpers advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itselfthe players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it.
Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of Americas card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one mans effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called Pleistocene exigenciesthe eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.
