Born to Lose

Born to Lose PDF Author: Bill Lee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1616491345
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
A gripping, true story of one man’s forty-year struggle with compulsive gambling and his hard-won recovery. "My history of gambling really began before I was born." So opens Born to Lose, Bill Lee's self-told story of gambling addiction, set in San Francisco's Chinatown and steeped in a culture where it is not unheard of for gamblers (Lee's grandfather included) to lose their children to a bet. From wagering away his beloved baseball card collection as a youngster to forfeiting everything he owned at black jack tables in Las Vegas, Lee describes what gambling addiction feels like from the inside and how recovery is possible through the Twelve Step program.

Born to Lose

Born to Lose PDF Author: Bill Lee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1616491345
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
A gripping, true story of one man’s forty-year struggle with compulsive gambling and his hard-won recovery. "My history of gambling really began before I was born." So opens Born to Lose, Bill Lee's self-told story of gambling addiction, set in San Francisco's Chinatown and steeped in a culture where it is not unheard of for gamblers (Lee's grandfather included) to lose their children to a bet. From wagering away his beloved baseball card collection as a youngster to forfeiting everything he owned at black jack tables in Las Vegas, Lee describes what gambling addiction feels like from the inside and how recovery is possible through the Twelve Step program.

Memoir of a Gambler

Memoir of a Gambler PDF Author: J Richardson
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


Double Down

Double Down PDF Author: Frederick Barthelme
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547959354
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
“An exquisitely crafted memoir” by two brothers who lost their parents, lost their inheritance—and almost lost their freedom (The Wall Street Journal). Frederick Barthelme and his brother Steven were both accomplished, respected writers with stable adult lives when they lost both of their parents in rapid succession. They had already lost their other brother, just a few years earlier. Suddenly they were on their own, emotionally unmoored—and unprepared for what would happen next. Their late father had been a prominent architect, and the brothers were left with a healthy inheritance. Over the following several years, they would lose close to a quarter million dollars in the gambling boats off the Mississippi coast. Then, in a bizarre twist, they were charged with violating state gambling laws, fingerprinted, and thrown into the surreal world of felony prosecution. For two years these widely publicized charges hung over their heads, shadowing their every step. Double Down is the wry, often heartbreaking story of how Frederick and Steven Barthelme got into this predicament. It is also a reflection on the allure of casinos and the pull and power of illusions that can destroy our lives if we aren’t careful. “One of the best firsthand accounts ever written about organized gambling. Like Goodman Brown, taking a walk with a hooded stranger into the darkness of the New England woods, the Barthelme brothers suddenly find themselves inside the maw of the monster. The compulsion to control, to intuit the future, to be painted by magic, could not be better or more accurately described.” —James Lee Burke “Beautifully evoking the gamblers’ addiction, their mesmerizing account is best read as a novel Camus might have imagined, with the writer/protagonists as their own lost characters. A work of high art; enthusiastically recommended.” —Library Journal

Play It Right

Play It Right PDF Author: Kamal Gupta
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1773059645
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A real-life underdog tale of one man turning the tables on the casinos and Wall Street without selling his soul to the devil All around the world, the words “Wall Street” conjure up a powerful image. For some, it is the center of America’s capitalist system and the engine of its economic growth. For others, it is the home of rapacious bankers and reckless traders whose greed would lead to a global financial crisis. For an Indian-born blackjack player, Wall Street represented something else entirely — a chance for him to play in the largest casino in the world. Kamal Gupta’s improbable journey, from a wide-eyed Indian immigrant to an ultimate insider in the rarefied world of investment banks and hedge funds, is a uniquely American story. Nowhere else would it have been possible for a scrawny computer scientist to enter the world of high finance solely on the basis of his gambling abilities. After spending seven years creating an investment methodology, Gupta went on an incredible run, generating an unprecedented 103 consecutive months of positive returns while managing money at large hedge funds. His success did not go unnoticed, and he found himself under constant pressure to take bigger risks to make even more money. He refused and always played it right, knowing that there was such a thing as “enough” money, something very few, if any, of his Wall Street peers understood. Much like Maria Konnikova’s bestseller, The Biggest Bluff, Play It Right isn’t so much about money as it is about the human condition and beating the odds, whether at a casino, on Wall Street, or in life itself.

Memoir of a Gambler

Memoir of a Gambler PDF Author: Jack Richardson
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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The Gambler Wife

The Gambler Wife PDF Author: Andrew D. Kaufman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525537155
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
FINALIST FOR THE PEN JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY “Feminism, history, literature, politics—this tale has all of that, and a heroine worthy of her own turn in the spotlight.” —Therese Anne Fowler, bestselling author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald A revelatory new portrait of the courageous woman who saved Dostoyevsky’s life—and became a pioneer in Russian literary history In the fall of 1866, a twenty-year-old stenographer named Anna Snitkina applied for a position with a writer she idolized: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A self-described “girl of the sixties,” Snitkina had come of age during Russia’s first feminist movement, and Dostoyevsky—a notorious radical turned acclaimed novelist—had impressed the young woman with his enlightened and visionary fiction. Yet in person she found the writer “terribly unhappy, broken, tormented,” weakened by epilepsy, and yoked to a ruinous gambling addiction. Alarmed by his condition, Anna became his trusted first reader and confidante, then his wife, and finally his business manager—launching one of literature’s most turbulent and fascinating marriages. The Gambler Wife offers a fresh and captivating portrait of Anna Dostoyevskaya, who reversed the novelist’s freefall and cleared the way for two of the most notable careers in Russian letters—her husband’s and her own. Drawing on diaries, letters, and other little-known archival sources, Andrew Kaufman reveals how Anna protected her family from creditors, demanding in-laws, and her greatest romantic rival, through years of penury and exile. We watch as she navigates the writer’s self-destructive binges in the casinos of Europe—even hazarding an audacious turn at roulette herself—until his addiction is conquered. And, finally, we watch as Anna frees her husband from predatory contracts by founding her own publishing house, making Anna the first solo female publisher in Russian history. The result is a story that challenges ideas of empowerment, sacrifice, and female agency in nineteenth-century Russia—and a welcome new appraisal of an indomitable woman whose legacy has been nearly lost to literary history.

Gripped by Gambling

Gripped by Gambling PDF Author: Marilyn Lancelot
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 158736770X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Lancelot takes a revealing look at the nightmare that had become her life--beginning with her alcohol addiction, followed by abuse of prescription drugs, overeating, and eventually gambling. This is her journey back from the hell she had created.

21 a Journey

21 a Journey PDF Author: Stephen W. Custer
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1418429473
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Get ready for a spine-tingling, chill-a-minute book, brought to you by Lecy McKenzie Pritchett, author of A Ghostly Cry. Ghost Stories My Mother Told Me, are eight hauntingly scary stories, that are sure to thrill even the most ardent horror fan. These group of horror stories, most told to the author by her mother, Isabel Martinez McKenzie, based on her gypsy life, and her encounters with supernatural forces, were bedtime stories that left the author shivering in terror. From an evil Indian Princess searching for revenge, to a mother battling unseen terrors to save her child, to a sad little boy whose search for love and acceptance transcends both time and death, all are sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. Each story contains a lesson in life, and it is up to you to decide what lesson they teach. Some of the stories are based on true encounters of the ghostly kind. So go ahead, lock your doors, turn up the lights, and get ready for a frightfully good scare, that is sure to please you.

The Noble Hustle

The Noble Hustle PDF Author: Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0345804333
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet. Look for Colson Whitehead’s bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!

The Gambler

The Gambler PDF Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description