<p><b>Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science--and eros--of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas</b></p><p>James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by <i>Harper</i>'s 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 tournament's 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.</p><p>McManus risks his entire <i>Harper</i>'s 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 itself--the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it.</p><p>Written in the tradition of <i>The Gambler </i>and <i>The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street</i> is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"--the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.</p>
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