The Noble Hustle Poker, Beef Jerky and Death [Paperback]

From the #1New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad

In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em.

Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet.

An NPR Best Book of the Year

“Astonishing. . . . Witty. . . . Tom Wolfe crossed with Tom Pynchon.” —The Washington Post 

“The Noble Hustleis fierce, funny and totally worth the buy-in.” —New York Daily News

“Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe
 
“The Noble Hustle, part love letter, part dark confessional, captures perfectly the mix of neurosis and narrative that makes gambling so appealing.” —Mother Jones

“[A] trenchant, ruefully funny memoir of one man’s attempt to dispel the banality of living with the anxiety of chance.” —USA Today

“Fascinating. . . . Funny. . l3S