A fresh but dispiriting spin on an old sports story: money corrupts—and lots of money corrupts absolutely.
Sportswriter Tuohy (Larceny Games: Sports Gambling, Game Fixing and the FBI, 2013, etc.) presents, in depth, the seamy world of football gambling.
Sports are betting games, and football is no different. Tuohy, who has written about sports for many publications, including Vice, here effectively brings to light what he sees as the illusory nature of football’s vaunted integrity. Financially strapped, amateur-status college players generate significant money for vested interests, so, to the author, it hardly seems hypocritical when they accept rewards under the table. But Tuohy’s biggest bugbear is the National Football League, which presents a squeaky-clean image to the world. The NFL says it doesn’t condone gambling, but such talk is meaningless, the author says, when gambling is legal and vigorous in Nevada. Tuohy admits that there’s “no record” of the biggest, most shadowy operators. But the records of police departments, the FBI, and investigative reporters offer clear evidence of an army of bookies ready to service bettors and organized crime: “Bookies are the foot soldiers of this illegal empire,” writes Tuohy. “They make the wheels turn, grinding those profits into the mob’s coffers.” They also may generate some $80 billion a year in unlawful bets, he says. His book also has much to report on the ruinous fallout from gambling, including addiction, players missing a block or faking an injury for payola, and the consequences of repeated concussions. Overall, Tuohy, who’s written at length about sports gambling in the past, is an excellent Virgil for this inferno. What makes his history of football wagering particularly pungent is that it comes in the wake of so many other football-related scandals, such as those involving physical abuse, cheating, and brain trauma. His tone is tough and common-sensical throughout, and he writes at times like he’s talking around a cigar: one “legendary oddsmaker,” he says, “was pinched by the feds” before he could hoodwink any more “noobs.”
A fresh but dispiriting spin on an old sports story: money corrupts—and lots of money corrupts absolutely.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-98-890112-4
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Mofo Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A crash course in big-bucks tort litigation, as rich as any novel on the scene. In the mid-'70s, the small industrial town of Woburn, Mass., found itself afflicted with a plague of biblical dimensions: 12 local children, 8 of them close neighbors, had died (or were dying) of leukemia. The parents suspected the water supply, which was foul-smelling, rusty, and undrinkable, but they had no hard evidence of a link to the cancers. But in 1979, the accidental discovery of carcinogenic industrial wastes in the town's wells led the grieving parents to hire personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, new to the profession but intoxicated with the sizable damages he'd won so far. This is magazine journalist Harr's first book, but his complex portrait of Schlichtmann is the work of a master. Egomaniacal, quixotic, workaholic, greedy, altruistic, and naive, Schlichtmann is Everylawyer, and as he allows the Woburn case to consume his practice, he almost loses his license and his life. Harr wisely downplays the dying-children angle, focusing instead on Schlichtmann's case against the two corporate Goliaths who dumped the waste: Beatrice Foods (represented by Jerome Facher of Boston's Hale & Dorr) and W.R. Grace (represented by William Cheeseman of Boston's Foley, Hoag & Eliot). Despite their white- shoe lineage, Facher and Cheeseman play dirty, withholding evidence and repeatedly seeking Schlichtmann's suspension for having filed a ``frivolous'' lawsuit. But the real villain of the story is Federal District Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose personal dislike of Schlichtmann (and camaraderie with Facher) leads him to grant the defense's motion to split the trial into two protracted phases. By the time Judge Skinner submits four incomprehensible questions to be bewildered jury, Woburn's young victims have been forgottenand the whole legal system has suffered a tragic loss. A paranoid legal thriller as readable as Grisham, but important and illuminating. (Film rights to Disney)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-56349-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
