POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker
James McManus
Picador USA
Current Events
ISBN: 0312422520

I have a litmus test for a truly great book. If a book --- fiction, non-fiction, whatever --- deals with a topic that I have absolutely no interest in and I am, notwithstanding my lack of interest in said topic, unable to put it down, THAT is a great book. Ergo, POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET is a GREAT book.

I have absolutely no interest in poker. I actually have no interest in card games, period, not even the ones played with pornographic decks. Even in college, where hands of blackjack and euchre were played between classes as naturally as those same classes were skipped, I never found myself raising and folding and calling and all of that good stuff. Dad played poker and Mom played bridge, but Joey played neither/nor. So why for the past few days have I been carrying around a book entitled POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET that discusses, among many, many other things, Binion's World Series of Poker? I didn't even know there was a World Series of Poker, or that it had the largest individual cash purse of any sporting event, or a lot of other things, until I read this gem.

The genesis of POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET occurred when the author, James McManus, was assigned by a magazine to cover the World Series of Poker and the murder of its host, a Las Vegas personality named Ted Binion. POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET begins with a graphic description of Binion's murder by his ex-stripper girlfriend and his best friend, who happens to be the stripper's boyfriend. As the book progresses we learn the back story of the principals involved in the murder and in the tournament and about Las Vegas. We also learn, on a parallel track, about how the lure of the tables proved too much for McManus to resist and how he risked his entire writing advance to play in the poker tournament himself. His initial excuse was that he could effectively write his article only by actually experiencing play at the table. It is McManus's step-by-step account of his transformation from a student of the game to finding himself seated at the final table that is the heart of the book.

This, in and of itself, would be interesting enough. McManus gives an excellent account to the untutored as to what is involved in the game of poker, both in the basics and the advanced strategies, but the book really only begins there. McManus writes with a looseness of association that is at first a bit disconcerting but ultimately reveals its purpose.

POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET delves into such topics as the history of the card deck --- it's fascinating, even if you haven't looked at a deck of cards in years --- and the appeal of what are politely known as "gentlemen's showbars." There are good, strong biological imperatives that these establishments appeal to and there are equally good, strong sociological reasons why they should be avoided. While not everyone who falls in love with a stripper meets the same fate as Ted Binion, there is more than one way and degree to ruin your life. What happens in Las Vegas may stay there, as the commercial goes, but that doesn't mean it won't have repercussions back home.

POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET is a wonderfully kaleidoscopic view of a city, a pastime and ultimately a way of life that entrances without seducing. While you can read it without feeling the urge to jump on a Nevada-bound plane, you'll never look at a deck of playing cards the same way again.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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