An entertaining and provocative portrait of a man whose dichotomies were largely a product of the violent times in which he...
The big life and fast times of one of the most charismatic and dangerous good ol’ boys in America’s criminal history.
No matter how you approach him, the legendary gambling mogul Benny Binion (1904-1989) was one lying, sneaky SOB, so it’s impressive that Dallas Morning News investigative projects editor and crime novelist Swanson (House of Corrections, 2000, etc.) has dug up this much dirty laundry. In this well-researched and executed biography, the author offers a head-scratching explanation as to how a Texas-bred hillbilly with an IQ in the double digits came to lead a multimillion-dollar gambling empire. Fans of other gangster histories will likely be intrigued by Binion’s arc, which spanned the 20th century and took him from the sticks of Texas to shape the modern-day direction of Las Vegas. Nicknamed “the Cowboy” after gunning down a local rumrunner, Binion soon came to be one of the most dangerous gangsters in Dallas, with several murders executed by his own hand. He admired his own ilk early, going so far as to arrange the delivery of a wreath at Clyde Barrow’s funeral in 1934—from an airplane, no less. In the most damning and fascinating story in the book, Swanson relates Binion’s feud with a long-standing rival, Herbert Noble. After an irate Binion put a price on his head, Noble survived nearly a dozen assassination attempts, all related in detail here. Finally, a car bomb that killed his wife nearly drove Noble over the edge before he finally got himself blown up in 1951. “They said he had nine lives,” said Binion of his foe. “Damn good thing he didn’t have ten.” The later sections of the book will be of interest to poker fans, as Binion retreats to Sin City to buy casinos and accidentally creates a legacy when he founds the World Series of Poker as a promotional stunt.
An entertaining and provocative portrait of a man whose dichotomies were largely a product of the violent times in which he thrived.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02603-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
PROFILES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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