The Noble Hustle
Poker, Beef Jerky and Death
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · March 3, 2015
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
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- Who it’s for
- A first-timer’s run at high-stakes poker becomes an ironic, searching look at the game’s culture.
- Themes
- Poker culture, Competition and self-discovery, Balancing family responsibilities
- Genres
- Poker, Personal Memoirs, Humor Essays
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From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe 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.
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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.
Poker, With Perspective
A first-timer’s run at high-stakes poker becomes an ironic, searching look at the game’s culture.
Come here for
- The mix of casino calculation, hope, and spectacle
- Poker-world detail filtered through a wry observer
Expect
- A sustained account of learning Texas Hold’em under pressure
- Humor alongside the game’s gritty, existential moments
Where it sits
| Poker | 59% |
|---|---|
| Personal Memoirs | 43% |
| Humor Essays | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Writers' Lives
- Poker
- Humor Essays
- Authors
- Colson Whitehead
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- March 3, 2015
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Poker culture · Competition and self-discovery · Balancing family responsibilities
- Reading lane
- Writers' Lives