Cowboys Full The Story of Poker [Paperback]

ANEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWEDITORS' CHOICE

Cowboys Fulltraces the story of poker from its roots in China, the Middle East, and Europe, through the back rooms of saloons and the parlors of U.S. presidents to its evolution as a global phenomenon. It describes how early Americans took a French parlor game and turned it into a national craze by the time of the Civil War. It explains how poker, once dominated by cardsharps, is now the most popular card game in Europe, East Asia, Australia, South America, and cyberspace, as well as on television. Along the way, James McManus examines the game's remarkable hold on American culture, seen in everything from Frederic Remington's paintings to countless poker novels, movies, and plays.Cowboys Fullis raucous and fascinating, a lively, definitive history of the game that, more than any other, explains who we are and how we operate.

James McManus has covered poker forThe New York Times,Los Angeles Times,Harper's Magazine,Card Player, ESPN.com, andThe NewYorker.Positively Fifth Street(FSG, 2003), his memoir of finishing fifth in the World Series of Poker championship event, was aNew York Timesbestseller and is already considered a classic.

The story of poker is that of risk-loving America and, recently, the rest of the world. Here is that crazy ride in unparalleled detail, driven by wit, wisdom, true love, and sizzling style. As analyst, historian, devotee, and no mean player, James McManus is poker's most eloquent advocate. Anthony Holden, author of Big Deal, Bigger Deal and Holden on Hold'em

Mr. McManus writes about our American love of poker like James A. Michener describing the Plains Indians' discovery of the buffalo: Waita second . . . I can eat it, wear it, make it into a drum . . . There'snothingI can't do with this sonofabitch.' I would throw in A joy for poker players and non-players alike,' but, of l3.