Download or read book Reno s Big Gamble written by Alicia Barber and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-05-19 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Pittsburgh socialite Laura Corey rolled into Reno, Nevada, in 1905 for a six-month stay, her goal was a divorce from the president of U.S. Steel. Her visit also provided a provocative glimpse into the city's future. With its rugged landscape and rough-edged culture, Reno had little to offer early twentieth-century visitors besides the gambling and prostitution that had remained unregulated since Nevada's silver-mining heyday. But the possibility of easy divorce attracted national media attention, East Coast notables, and Hollywood stars, and soon the "Reno Cure" was all the rage. Almost overnight, Reno was on the map. Alicia Barber traces the transformation of Reno's reputation from backward railroad town to the nationally known "Sin Central"—as Garrison Keillor observed, a place where you could see things that you wouldn't want to see in your own hometown. Chronicling the city's changing fortunes from the days of the Comstock Lode, she describes how city leaders came to embrace an identity as "The Biggest Little City in the World" and transform their town into a lively tourist mecca. Focusing on the evolution of urban reputation, Barber carefully distinguishes between the image that a city's promoters hope to manufacture and the impression that outsiders actually have. Interweaving aspects of urban identity, she shows how sense of place, promoted image, and civic reputation intermingled and influenced each other—and how they in turn shaped the urban environment. Quickie divorces notwithstanding, Reno's primary growth engine was gambling; modern casinos came to dominate the downtown landscape. When mainstream America balked, Reno countered by advertising "tax freedom" and natural splendor to attract new residents. But by the mid-seventies, unchecked growth and competition from Las Vegas had initiated a downslide that persisted until a carefully crafted series of special events and the rise of recreational tourism began to attract new breeds of tourists. Barber's engaging story portrays Reno as more than a second-string Las Vegas, having pioneered most of the attractions-gaming and prizefighting, divorces and weddings-that made the larger city famous. As Reno continues to remold itself to weather the shifting winds of tourism and growth, Barber's book provides a cautionary tale for other cities hoping to ride the latest consumer trends.
Download or read book The Big Gamble written by Michael McGarrity and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-08-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael McGarrity's acclaimed Santa Fe police chief, Kevin Kerney is back-with his estranged son. Two bodies have been found in a burned building. One is a missing person from Kerney's cold case files. The other is a more recent homicide. Both will lead father and son into a vast network of crime...and the darkest places of the soul.
Download or read book The Big Gamble written by Milena Belloni and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations.
Download or read book The Big Gamble written by Denise von Herrmann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-12-30 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the gambling industry is indisputably large and powerful, it has received little attention from political scientists. Utilizing a variety of perspectives and techniques, von Herrmann analyzes gambling's recent expansion, finding public attitudes have been shaped both by government policies and the industry's attempts to create a family-friendly image. Von Herrmann examines the politics of state and federal gambling policy, particularly policies relating to casinos and state lotteries. She considers gambling policy from a variety of perspectives, including the politics of adoption, the state and federal governments' role in policy formation and implementation, and the broad economic and social impact questions related to gambling. The inclusion of several state case studies provides insight into the largely successful reshaping of Americans' image of gambling—from seedy, sinful, and corrupt behavior to a benign, pleasurable entertainment experience—which ultimately has led to widespread availability. While many have asserted that gambling policy fits well within the political models of morality politics, von Herrmann challenges this notion. Noting that true consensus has not been achieved in the area of gambling policy, she shows how supporters' economic arguments and opponents' moral concerns have effectively bifurcated the current debates on gambling policy; gambling is now viewed by many in two distinct and separate bodies of thought. As she observes, the challenge for the future of gambling policy is to find ways to bridge the gap. Of particular interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with public policy, particularly that relating to gambling.
Download or read book The Great Gamble written by David L. Bluder and published by Ice Cube Press. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An odd-couple of FBI agents embark on a classified operation into the gambling battlefield which is bleeding into the corrupt empire of athletics. Will the FBI uncover the truth that could shock the nation? A deadly international hunt leads to a fascinating sting in Mexico City before it returns to the sickening web of sports corruption in the United States. THE GREAT GAMBLE is full of suspense and revelation. Uncovering the deceptive and corrupt universe of gambling and sports betting previously hidden from the eyes of fans. Can everyone be had for the right price? A novel that entertains and informs. Everyone has a price when tempation or need makes them alter their decisions. It's the consequences that follow that change lives. Think Indecent Proposal, the apple in the garden.
Download or read book The Big Gamble written by Jose D. Roncal and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Big Gamble takes you on an armchair journey from the tulip fields of 17th century Holland and the South Seas to the gaming tables in Las Vegas. Discover how economic bubbles form, and learn about an "early warning system" you can use to either avoid the next one or wisely capitalize on it. In plain English, without jargon or blue-sky economic theory, discover: Why you're not really "playing it safe" when you invest conservatively, even in U.S. Treasury bills or mutual funds. Nine financial risks you need to watch out for when building a portfolio or allocating investments in your 401(k) plan. The twelve cardinal rules of speculating that are critical to successfully making your assets grow. Why you should think twice before sinking your life savings into economic icons like General Motors or Wal-Mart. Three surefire economic signals that will show you the "next big thing" and identify potential bubbles when they are beginning.
Download or read book The Big Gamble written by Milena Belloni and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations.
Download or read book The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told written by Mark Paul and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told is an inspiring personal narrative about a filly named Winning Colors who broke through the male-dominated world of horseracing, and a trio of gamblers who embark on an unforgettable adventure as epic as the horse's historic victory. It's Seabiscuit meets Narcos, and the best true-life gambling story ever tol
Download or read book Biggest Gamble on Earth written by Ira H. Cram and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Biggest Bluff written by Maria Konnikova and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book “The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she learned both about human nature and herself.” —The Washington Post It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker. But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like "How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player." She even learned to like Las Vegas. But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.
Download or read book The 80 Billion Gamble written by Terry Rich and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eddie Tipton went to prison in 2017 for masterminding the biggest lottery fraud in U.S. history. In a twisting and bizarre tale, he somehow mixed a cocktail of greed, Bigfoot hunting, deception, cybercrime and a love of hot dogs on his way to a felony conviction after he and several accomplices scored a series of jackpots from rigged drawings but fell short on the biggest "score' of them all. Call it "The $80 Billion Gamble" because the future of the entire lottery industry was at risk if someone didn't solve this case of computer tampering and multimillion-dollar prizes. Tipton's downfall made international news, but this book tells the story of the investigators and public officials who solved the mystery. Veteran journalist Perry Beeman and retired lottery executive Terry Rich use a vivid mixture of recorded phone calls, court documents, personal communications and the public record to give readers an exclusive inside view of one of the most surprising and captivating white-collar crimes the nation has seen. It's a wild story of greed and misplaced confidence, and a study in public officials whose determination survived a nearly cold trail, a team that insisted on being transparent and sticking with the case. As you'll read in these pages, they did - against long odds.
Download or read book Casino Healthcare written by Dan Munro and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-25 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Michael Lewis was recently interviewed by Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes and a quote from that interview was the inspiration and influence for Casino Healthcare."If it wasn't complicated, it wouldn't be allowed to happen. The complexity disguises what's happening. If it's so complicated that you can't understand it - then you can't question it." What he was referencing, of course, was high-speed trading on Wall Street, but the quote could just as easily be applied to healthcare. In fact, it's tailor-made.The statistics prove just how much of a casino the U.S. healthcare system has become.* As a country, we now spend over $10,000 per year - for each person - just on healthcare.* Measured as an economic unit, U.S. Healthcare is now the size of Germany. * Preventable medical errors are now the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. (behind cancer and heart disease). * Medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcies in the U.S.* Hospital pricing is determined by a cabal - in secret - and beyond legal challenge.* The Pharmaceutical industry - with profit margins that often eclipse tech giants like Apple and Google - paid out a whopping $15 billion in fines over the last six years - just for off-label drug marketing.* American healthcare was recently ranked dead last when compared to 10 other countries.The system has become so complex and opaque that most Americans have simply given up on understanding how it works. Whole families are crushed in this casino trying to pay for unanticipated medical expenses, many of which are immediate, unavoidable and life threatening. The huge expense might be defensible if the system delivered exceptional quality, but it doesn't. When the World Health Organization last ranked health systems, the U.S. came in at #37 - just ahead of #38 (Slovenia) and behind #36 (Costa Rica).Casino Healthcare is not a theoretical policy book for the elite, but a book that penetrates the blanket of fog surrounding a major - and growing - household expense. With the research and style of an investigative journalist, the book is easy to understand and accessible by every American. The U.S. healthcare system was never designed from whole cloth with a strategic vision or intent, but instead it has evolved through the decades with a host of legislative "patches" and temporary fixes. The reason for this is simple. When a casino is generating profits of this magnitude it's critical to keep the casino humming and almost impossible to close it. Rick Scott - now the Governor of Florida - captured the enormous scale of this challenge with this simple two-sentence quote:"How many businesses do you know that want to cut their revenue in half? That's why the healthcare system won't change the healthcare system." Americans have a right to be angry with how the U.S. healthcare system has been hijacked for revenue and profits. One analyst recently categorized it as "legalized extortion on a national scale." In the same way that Michael Lewis exposed the complexity of high-speed trading on Wall Street, Casino Healthcare will expose the U.S. healthcare system for what it really is - a giant casino of epic proportions where the risks are both personal and nothing less than the health of an entire nation.
Download or read book Life s a Gamble written by Mike Sexton and published by D&B Publishing. This book was released on with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Perfect Bet written by Adam Kucharski and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An elegant and amusing account" of how gambling has been reshaped by the application of science and revealed the truth behind a lucky bet (Wall Street Journal). For the past 500 years, gamblers-led by mathematicians and scientists-have been trying to figure out how to pull the rug out from under Lady Luck. In The Perfect Bet, mathematician and award-winning writer Adam Kucharski tells the astonishing story of how the experts have succeeded, revolutionizing mathematics and science in the process. The house can seem unbeatable. Kucharski shows us just why it isn't. Even better, he demonstrates how the search for the perfect bet has been crucial for the scientific pursuit of a better world.
Download or read book The Greatest Gamble written by Elizabeth York Miller and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The World According to Fannie Davis written by Bridgett M. Davis and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride). In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts." A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.
Download or read book Biggest Gamble on the Mississippi written by Brian Cooper and published by . This book was released on 2017-10-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iowa natives Bob and Ruth Kehl repeatedly applied their entrepreneurial spirit, tireless work ethic and self-confidence to parlay one success into another in the restaurant, tourism and gaming businesses. On several times they gambled on themselves -- going "all in" -- toward various ventures, many based on and near their beloved Mississippi River. Dedicated, determined and down-to-earth, they progressed from operators of a small diner in Dubuque, Iowa, to owners and operators of multi-million-dollar riverboats, including the first casino boat licensed in the US. In 1986, the residents of Dubuque, Iowa, were national Small Business Persons of the Year, an honor that came with a meeting with the president in the Oval Office. Following in their entrepreneurial footsteps, in the gaming and tourism industries, are several of Bob and Ruth¿s children and grandchildren. ¿Biggest Gamble on the Mississippi¿ is a rags-to-riches tale of triumph, tempered by tragedy, coming direct from the Heartland.
