writing

Craftily arranged nouns, verbs, and more.

Marty Byrde, King Dice, and gaming’s enduring image problem – CDC Gaming Reports

For my latest commentary, I started thinking about how two recent bits of pop culture reflect on casinos. The answer: not well: The casino gaming industry is in a funny place. For those of us inside the bubble, it’s a business brimming with regulations, compliance, and integrity. For those outside it, though, casinos are still, …

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An important anniversary for Las Vegas gaming – CDC Gaming Reports

I’ve got another commentary up today, marking another important milestone: Today, we mark another milestone of Nevada gaming history, one that reminds us how far the state and the industry have come, and how far both still have to go. On March 26, 1960, Governor Grant Sawyer, Las Vegas NAACP President Dr. James McMillan, Las …

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All’s well that ends well with the Upick debacle  – CDC Gaming Reports

Last week I had a commentary published on CDC Gaming Reports about the possibly already forgotten Golden Knights/Upick partnership. As usual, I tried to see the positive. Here it is: You probably have already heard the story. It raced across Twitter in a brilliant blaze last week before sputtering into dust over the weekend. The Vegas Golden …

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The Kefauver hearing in Las Vegas | The Mob Museum

In honor of Kefauver Day, the Mob Museum published a short article I wrote that summarized the drama of the Kefauver Committee’s hearing in Las Vegas; The U.S. Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver, focused attention as never before on gambling-related crime as a national …

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“Pitiless Cruelty: Cynicism, Capitalism, and Gambling in the Writing of Mario Puzo” – Popular Culture Review

I have an article in the latest edition of the Popular Culture Review about Mario Puzo’s views on capitalism and gambling: The Godfather made him a wealthy man, but Mario Puzo’s long years as a struggling writer and childhood in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen conditioned him to treat money—and those who made a great …

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