American Gambler Book Club

Elon University professor David Bockino’s new book on the history of sports gambling makes the case that sports in America aren’t corrupted by gambling - but owe their very existence to the undeniable American urge to gamble. He joins me on this episode to discuss his book and his research. Buy Over/Under: An Unexpected History of Sports Gambling American Gambler is a reader-supported publication....

I finally broke my standing rule of “No Fiction” in this episode to read Bernard Malamud’s debut novel The Natural . If you’ve seen the 1984 film adaptation starring Robert Redford but, like me, had never read the novel, you will be shocked at how radically different the story in the 1952 novel is from that of the feel-good film. Joining me to discuss is the co-host of the No Homework podcast Char...

Nate Silver’s 2024 bestseller On the Edge: Risking it All is a deep-dive into the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of our modern-day gambling-obsessed America. In nearly six hundred pages he examines everything from poker to cryptocurrency to AI, and presents an ontology that divides American elites into “The River” and “The Village”: risk-takers and risk-averse. Joining me to discuss it i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidhill.substack.com Our current book club pick is Something for Nothing: Luck in America by Jackson Lears. We’re trying something new for this book: weekly livestream discussions. Tune in live each week to watch for free or subscribe and get access to the archived videos. This week we continue with a discussion of Chapters 4 & 5. Ame...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidhill.substack.com Our current book club pick is Something for Nothing: Luck in America by Jackson Lears. We’re trying something new for this book: weekly livestream discussions. Tune in live each week on Mondays at 2pm to watch or subscribe and get access to the archive. This week we kick it off with a discussion of the Introductio...

Two experimental economists spent decades studying the way human beings evaluate risk and probability by doing gambling experiments on people all over the world. Then they repeated those experiments with elephants. What they learned might hold the key to some of humanity's most pressing issues - including climate change. This week we read The Gambling Animal: Humanity’s Evolutionary Winning Streak...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidhill.substack.com After reading the recent Atlantic cover story on sports gambling I knew I needed to vent about it to someone, so I asked my friend Danny Funt to come on my substack and have a friendly debate about it. He’s the author of the book Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling and has been coverin...

Gary Mayer’s first (and only?) book came out in 1974 when he was 29 years old. It was an account of the two and a half years he spent working for his bookie to pay off his debts called Bookie: My Life in Disorganized Crime . It was darkly funny and at the time it was well received. Over the years it has faded into obscurity, and its author and subject both gone with little trace of the rest of the...

We’re kicking off the second season of AGBC with the memoir of perhaps the most famous American gambler of all time: Jimmy the Greek Snyder. Known as the “Oddsmaker to the Nation” during his twelve-year run on CBS, his life was a high-stakes drama defined by a presidential pardon, the tragic loss of his children, and an abrupt 1988 downfall that he claimed “carved his guts right out”. This episode...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidhill.substack.com I had a fun conversation with Ursula Lawrence about Marty Supreme. We talked about the incredible cast, the ways the film explores life in the immediate aftermath of the war, and the ways that it is as much a gambling movie as Uncut Gems. We also check the prices on Kalshi and decide it’s a strong BUY at $0.07. Am...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidhill.substack.com In the first of what I hope will be a number of regular Substack Live conversations here, I had a really enlightening conversation with Gina Fiore . Gina is also in the midst of trying to complete a book, and we talked all about the writing process and the fears and anxieties that accompany publishing. Some of the...

The final episode of the year AND the season, and it’s a good one. This week we read Michael Lewis’s 2010 bestseller The Big Short , a book about gambling at the highest of stakes, the unlikely characters who won big, and the losers who let the American people settle their debt. Joining me to discuss The Big Short is Sal Gentile, who writes A Closer Look on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Sal and I d...

Laughing in the Hills, Bill Barich’s 1979 memoir of ten weeks spent at Golden Gate Fields racetrack in Northern California, was named one of Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. First serialized in The New Yorker, the book is about far more than the sport of horse racing, and far more than just gambling. It’s about grief, philosophy, art, culture, spirituality, media, and more. I...

This week we do something a little different. Our paid subscriber book club met up in Brooklyn over the weekend to play some low-stakes poker with Peter Alson, the author of our most recent book club pick, The Vig: Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie . This episode is a recording of a conversation with Peter during that game. Presented by InGame.com. Buy The Vig by Peter Alson Buy Take Me to the R...

This week we discuss a book that has it all: a writer succumbs to alcohol and ends up in a mental institution, fist fights with random strangers, has tons of meaningless sex, engages in self righteousness, self hatred, and cynicism in equal measure, rejects middle class morality, and acts as a courier for a single bet made on a football game (we had to get some gambling in there somewhere). The bo...

Kevin Cook’s 2010 book The True Story of Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything is a superbly written, thoroughly researched, novel-like history of one of the most fabled figures in the annals of gambling lore: Alvin Thomas. I’m joined to discuss the book and all things Titanic by the journalist and former poker pro Steve Ruddock, creator of the substack Straight to the Point. Presented b...

This week on the show we discuss the classic architecture text Learning from Las Vegas , a book that revolutionized design theory by rejecting the original and heroic and celebrating the ugly and ordinary - qualities the authors found in abundant supply in 1966 on the Las Vegas Strip. My guest to discuss this book is the funny and brilliant Molly Lambert: a cultural critic, journalist, and the cre...

Michael Konik set out to write a magazine article about a famous sports gambler. Instead he ended up working for him for years. When Konik finally had enough of the gambling life he wrote a memoir called The Smart Money , and it offers a rare up-close view of the ins and outs of one of the biggest sports betting operations in American history. Joining me to discuss it is ESPN’s David Purdum. We ta...

Lucy Sante’s 1991 book Low Life is a survey of life among the underclass of New York City in the nineteenth century - a life that was oft described as “sporting,” which is to say one filled with sex, booze, and gambling. It’s a brilliant work of research and writing that feels decidedly un-academic and poetic, yet still tells many tales long forgotten by many historians. Joining me to discuss Low...

This week’s book is a potboiler of a memoir of one young woman’s time in the trenches of the biggest illegal bookmaking operation in the United States. Joining me to discuss it is writer and professional gambler Gina Fiore. We have a wide ranging conversation that touches on everything from sweepstakes casinos to fantasies about hockey players. Presented by InGame.com Read “Polymarket May Not Be A...

This week we once again venture into the realm of the World Series of Poker and read The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death by Colson Whitehead, a memoir of the 2011 WSOP which has the dubious distinction of possibly being the worst book ever written by the greatest living American writer. My guest is Ian Frisch, author of the new book Inside the Cartel . Presented by InGame.com. Buy The No...

And we’re back! This week I am joined by Blackjack Hall of Fame member Richard Munchkin to discuss Ken Uston’s messy and outrageous debut book, The Big Player . For most of the 1980s Ken Uston was a celebrity for beating casinos at blackjack. He wrote countless books, his picture adorned magazine covers and video game boxes, he appeared on national television and hung out with stars. And The Big P...

This week the television writer Ursula Lawrence joins me to talk about Deadwood creator David Milch’s memoir Life’s Work . We talk about addiction, ego, generational trauma, prestige television, meat raffles, and so much more. Presented by InGame.com. Read “CNN Failed To Tell ‘The Whole Story’ Of Sports Betting Expansion” by Jill R. Dorson at InGame.com Buy Life’s Work by David Milch American Gamb...

This week I discuss Al Alvarez’s classic The Biggest Game in Town with writer and poker-chronicler-du-jour Lance Bradley. The book details the British poet and critic’s month spent in downtown Las Vegas covering the 1981 World Series of Poker for The New Yorker, and it continues to be celebrated to this day as one of the greatest books on poker ever written. We discuss the romanticism of gambling,...

This week’s episode is recorded in a hotel room in downtown Vegas, which is fitting because I discuss the book Vegas: Memoir of a Dark Season by John Gregory Dunne. Joining me is Haley Mlotek, author of the acclaimed book No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce . We talk about Las Vegas, love, divorce, fiction, fantasy, debauchery, empathy, and, of course, Joan Didion. Presented by InGame.com. R...