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From James McManus, author of the bestselling Positively Fifth Street, comes the definitive story of the game that, more than any other, reflects who we are and how we operate.
Cowboys Full is the story of poker, from its roots in China, the Middle East, and Europe to its ascent as a global—but especially an American—phenomenon. It describes how early Americans took a French parlor game and, with a few extra cards and an entrepreneurial spirit, turned it into a national craze by the time of the Civil War. From the kitchen-table games of ordinary citizens to its influence on generals and diplomats, poker has gone hand in hand with our national experience. Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama have deployed poker and its strategies to explain policy, to relax with friends, to negotiate treaties and crises, and as a political networking tool. The ways we all do battle and business are echoed by poker tactics: cheating and thwarting cheaters, leveraging uncertainty, bluffing and sussing out bluffers, managing risk and reward.
Cowboys Full shows how what was once accurately called the cheater’s game has become amostly honest contest of cunning, mathematical precision, and luck. It explains how poker, formerly dominated by cardsharps, is now the most popular card game in Europe, East Asia, Australia, South America, and cyberspace, as well as on television. It combines colorful history with firsthand experience from today’s professional tour. And it examines poker’s remarkable hold on American culture, from paintings by Frederic Remington to countless poker novels, movies, and plays. Braiding the thrill of individual hands with new ways of seeing poker’s relevance to our military, diplomatic, business, and personal affairs, Cowboys Full is sure to become the classic account of America’s favorite pastime.
- Sales Rank: #1190791 in Books
- Published on: 2009-10-27
- Released on: 2009-10-27
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x 1.70" w x 6.44" l, 2.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 528 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780374299248
- Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2009: Professional sports such as football and baseball may tout themselves as "America's Game," but according to James McManus, poker is the true American pastime. Cowboys Full is McManus's brilliant homage to the game that inspired his 2003 bestseller, Positively Fifth Street, and weaves through a colorful history of sharps, grinders, and braying donkeys. From the lawless saloons of the Old West to Oval Offices of the modern era, poker has been a part of our cultural DNA for nearly two centuries by offering a shot at the American Dream with each deal. "More than politics, warfare, business, or physical sports," McManus argues, "poker has become the arena in which men and women of every race and background compete on the most equal footing." Although positioning it alongside Mom and apple pie may be a stretch, Cowboys Full nevertheless presents a compelling case that the essence of America is best understood through a few hands of its favorite card game. --Dave Callanan
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Poker now has what must surely be its definitive history in this excellent, comprehensive account of the game from the author of the widely hailed poker memoir Positively Fifth Street. In tracing the game from its early 19th-century roots in New Orleans to today's global phenomenon, McManus does more than present a history of poker: “My goal is to show how the story of poker helps to explain who we are.” The “national card game,” he asserts, embodies essential American qualities. It's an ambitious objective, but the book achieves it by connecting the game to American culture. Poker, it turns out, is inextricably linked with history, from the Civil War to the cold war, and with politics (Nixon financed his first run for office with poker winnings earned during his WWII service; President Obama may owe some of his political fortunes to a regular poker game he joined after election to the Illinois senate). The book also outlines the re-emergence of poker in recent years as a pastime for many millions and, for a select few, a reasonably legitimate profession.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
McManus's Cowboys Full makes room for everyone at the table. Lightweights will learn something about the basics of the game and why it appeals to so many people, while those already convinced of poker's importance will find much to enjoy here as well. Reviewers indicated that even those who do not normally enjoy history will appreciate the book's insights into how the game's past informs today's political strategies. A few critics considered some of McManus's arguments somewhat overreaching and some of his anecdotes, well, anecdotal—but what would a book about poker be without a couple of good bluffs?
Most helpful customer reviews
51 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
From Card Player...
By Paul Benjamin
I reviewed Jim's book for Card Player magazine, and it appears in the November 4, 2009, issue, as follows:
Poker & The American Experience
A Review of Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus
Tim Peters
For some players, poker is just a game. But for many players, it's tempting to see the game as a microcosm of life itself, as having a significance that transcends the cardroom. James McManus, the author of the justly celebrated Positively Fifth Street (his 2003 account of his run to the final table of the 2000 WSOP Main Event), is one of those people, and his new book, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, explains why "sometimes...the game is much more than just a game."
Much of the book has been published in Card Player over the past few years under the heading "History of Poker." Now that it's in book form, Cowboys Full will surely be viewed as the most exhaustive and definite account of the history of poker yet published.
And it is a very much a history, chronicling the ancient roots of poker to its birth and flowering in New Orleans to the global phenomenon of today. But what makes Cowboys Full so interesting is how McManus articulates the role of poker in society (primarily American society). He writes about how the game spread across the country, how it evolved, and the lessons that people have drawn from it. As the subtitle "The Story of Poker" suggests, McManus rightly understands that poker is part of a larger narrative. "My goal," he writes, "is to show how the story of poker helps to explains who we are. The game has gone hand in hand with pivotal aspects of our national experience for a couple of centuries now."
McManus asserts July 4, 1803, can be seen as the "symbolic birth date" for the game: the date of the Louisiana Purchase, which helped open the American West. He writes that poker was the perfect game for this era in American history, a game "whose rules favored a frontiersman's initiative and cunning, an entrepreneur's creative sense of risk, and a democratic openness to every class of player." Poker really is the quintessential American game.
Poker's infancy was marked by scandal, particularly during the heyday of the Mississippi River steamboats ( "the Internet card rooms of 1814"). "By the 1830s, at least six hundred sharps were working the riverboats, with one estimate putting their number as high as fifteen hundred," he writes. Poker was known as "the cheating game" with good reason, and McManus devotes a whole chapter to the "styles and technologies of cheating" back in the day.
Despite the rampant cheating, at least in big-money games, poker spread far and wide in the young country. The steamboats introduced poker to players in the North and the West; the Civil War introduced the game to players in battlefields across the South. McManus has thoroughly scoured the existing literature of poker to recount all kinds of stories, familiar and less so, of the game, including stalwarts like the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, South Dakota, holding Aces and Eights. But because McManus is a cultural historian, he searches for the meaning behind the event: "It was Wild Bill Hickok who forged the strong links in the popular imagination between gunfighting, poker, and manliness--all this despite being known as a losing player who was shot from behind by a cowardly punk at the table."
That's a good example of his strategy in the book: recount the facts, at least to the extent they are known, then search for the meaning and significance behind the facts.
With the origins and spread of poker behind him, McManus turns to a less linear style for the rest of the book, with chapters on important people in the history of the game (such as Herbert O. Yardley, American cryptologist and the author of The Education of a Poker Player) and events where poker played a role (such as the terrific account of poker and its relation to the Cold War).
And there are chapters on key aspects of poker history. The birth of Texas Hold'em, for example, the rise of the WSOP, and the detonation of the contemporary poker boom, which McManus dates to March 30, 2003, when the Travel Channel broadcast the Five Diamond World Poker Classic from the Bellagio. The book is particularly good on the ensuing boom (poker as a global phenomenon) and the current legal mess of the UIGEA.
McManus is an excellent stylist and storyteller, so the book is unfailingly entertaining. Structurally, he struggles a bit with chapters that belong in the book but don't have a neat slot to fit into (like the chapter on Gardena, California, and its important place in poker history). But some of these difficult-to-pigeonhole bits are excellent, like the chapter "Fooled by Randomness."
Most of the books reviewed in Card Player are designed to help you improve your play. But some are intended to help you appreciate the game you're playing--its history, its traditions, and its cultural impact. We are living in what must surely be the golden age of poker, with games spread around the globe in unprecedented numbers, with a year-long tournament circuit with staggering prize pools, and, for a few people, the chance to turn poker playing into a career. Read Cowboys Full to understand how this golden age came about--and to grasp that poker does have a meaning beyond the felt.
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
The Best Poker Book I have EVER read!
By POKER4FUN
Cowboys Full is the best book about poker I've ever read, and I've read just about all of them. The history of cards, of poker (draw, stud, high-low, hold'em, Omaha, H.O.R.S.E., even badugi!), Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, all the presidents and generals who played, the WSOP from its days at Binion's Horseshoe to 8,000 players at the Rio and on ESPN, the Andy Beal game, the science and technology of the game as it's now being played live and on the Internet. READ THIS BOOK!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A Masterpiece of Poker History and Lore
By Ashley Adams
This is a significant contribution to the poker literature. It is a wonderful, vibrant account of poker's history -- starting with its antecedent games and continuing up until the present televised and Internet version of our great American game. McManus' first book on poker, Positively Fifth Street, convinced me that he was a great writer and storyteller. This book convinces me that he is a fine researcher as well.
That this is a great history of a great game is true, but it doesn't do justice to the 500 page book. It is more a telling of great poker tales, intertwined with historical events that shed a new light on the importance of poker in our nation's history. In that sense it is also a psychological analysis of important moments of American history (like the Civil War, the development of the West, and the rise of Barack Obama) as seen through the lens of a poker player.
Those who might be intimidated by this books formitable length should know that unlike Positively Fifth Street, Cowboys Full does not have to be read as a single narrative (Though I read it cover to cover in three mammoth sittings -- so compelling are the stories). It is entertaining and informative in bits and pieces; each chapter standing alone. It could well sit on your nightstand for a year -- providing a nice small nugget of poker history and lore each night to entertain you -- and to fill your dreams.
See all 55 customer reviews...
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