Reviews From Our Customers
A book that gets better every 50 pages.
Positively Fifth Street is one of those rare nonfiction books that read like a great first person novel. It doesn't hurt that McManus follows in the gonzo tradition of Hunter Thompson on his journey. The book begins with McManus a professor and freelance writer who is hired to write a story on how women are appearing more and more at the World Series of Poker and how women are becoming more visible in the game. But this is no ordinary World Series, because the Binion family that has run the event every year since its founding is distracted by the murder trial of sibling, Ted Binion. And to top it off, author, narrator, Jim McManus is also a bit of a poker player himself.
Jim wants to enter the tournament with his writing advance, but he doesn't have enough money. He has two college aged children and two young children at home and nothing but bills. With all of the tension of the story Jim is sent to cover, his own personal tensions slowly become the center of the book, especially after he enters the tournament and goes up against famous players, including the author of Jim's favorite tournament book, TJ Cloutier.
I found the writing very immediate like a conversation that happens immediately after the event. I also found the tension internal and external was enough to sustain the multiple storylines. McManus seems to end each section of commentary at a natural conclusion and this makes the transitions easy to follow. I enjoyed Alvarez' great history ONLY GAME IN TOWN and found Anthony Holden's BIG DEAL quite interesting, but neither was as fun to read for me as POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET.
This is the kind of book that you can enjoy regardless of your poker knowledge. It may even convince you to take up the game.
You'll never look at a deck of cards the same way again!
......
The genesis of POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET occurred when the author, James McManus, was assigned by a magazine to cover the World Series of Poker and the murder of its host, a Las Vegas personality named Ted Binion. POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET begins with a graphic description of Binion's murder by his ex-stripper girlfriend and his best friend, who happens to be the stripper's boyfriend. As the book progresses we learn the back story of the principals involved in the murder and in the tournament and about Las Vegas. We also learn, on a parallel track, about how the lure of the tables proved too much for McManus to resist and how he risked his entire writing advance to play in the poker tournament himself. His initial excuse was that he could effectively write his article only by actually experiencing play at the table. It is McManus's step-by-step account of his transformation from a student of the game to finding himself seated at the final table that is the heart of the book.
This, in and of itself, would be interesting enough. McManus gives an excellent account to the untutored as to what is involved in the game of poker, both in the basics and the advanced strategies, but the book really only begins there. McManus writes with a looseness of association that is at first a bit disconcerting but ultimately reveals its purpose.
POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET delves into such topics as the history of the card deck --- it's fascinating, even if you haven't looked at a deck of cards in years --- and the appeal of what are politely known as "gentlemen's showbars." There are good, strong biological imperatives that these establishments appeal to and there are equally good, strong sociological reasons why they should be avoided. While not everyone who falls in love with a stripper meets the same fate as Ted Binion, there is more than one way and degree to ruin your life. What happens in Las Vegas may stay there, as the commercial goes, but that doesn't mean it won't have repercussions back home.
POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET is a wonderfully kaleidoscopic view of a city, a pastime and ultimately a way of life that entrances without seducing. While you can read it without feeling the urge to jump on a Nevada-bound plane, you'll never look at a deck of playing cards the same way again.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Self-Conscious Effort
Parts of this book were great. In particular, those parts recounting the author's play in the World Series of Poker, the history of card-playing, specifially poker, and his primer on the game of Texas Hold 'Em and its strategy.
Unfortunately, I think the author was self-conscious about making himself the star of the book. He therefore added a superfluous account of the murder of Ted Binion and parts of the trial of his accused murderes. These parts did not add to the book, but they did not detract either.
Other parts did detract, however. For instance, there was no need for a chapter on an obscure poet who had committed suicide (except perhaps to show that the author considered himself a poet before an autobiographer). So also his many pages devoted to other works on poker were tedious. Worst, he repeatedly tried to put poker onto a tremendously lofty plain by making grand philosophical leaps about its place in humankind.
This book easily would have been a four star, perhaps a five star, effort if the author had stuck to the game of poker generally, its strategy and the hugely entertaining recap of his participation in the tournament. An editor should have told him it would have been okay to leave it at that.
