Last month, I traveled to London to give a series of lectures to students at Cass Business School. While there, I had some thoughts about the differences between gambling in the US and the UK, so I wrote a Green Felt Journal about it for Vegas Seven: The result is a casino industry that is […]
Rules of the British Game in Vegas Seven Read More »
authorIf you’ve been waiting to buy Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition) in paperback from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, wait no longer: it’s now available from both booksellers, as well as Lulu.com, where you get a 20% discount: Amazon: Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition) $26 (free shipping) Barnes and
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Roll the Bones, writingThis week in Vegas Seven, my “Seven Questions” interview with Tom Breitling is running: Tom Breitling’s career started humbly enough: In the early 1990s, he was a sportscaster and weatherman for a TV station … in Barstow. By decade’s end, Breitling had surfed the dot-com boom to a multimillion-dollar payout, which came in 2000 when
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Vegas Seven, writingThis week, I’ve got four pieces in Vegas Seven magazine. The first is the Green Felt Journal, where I take a look at whether nightclubs are reaching a saturation point: If there’s a proven moneymaker on the Las Vegas Strip today, it’s a top-flight nightclub. With tremendous margins on bottle service and measureless lines of
Does Las Vegas Have a Nightclub Bubble? in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writingThese days, some people prefer their books in print; some prefer them electronically. That’s why I’ve gone to great lengths to make the new edition of Roll the Bones available across as many platforms as possible. Well, if you define “making a few formatting tweaks to submit it to four different eplatforms” as great lengths,
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Roll the Bones, writingFor all of those who’ve been waiting to get Roll the Bones: Casino Edition on their iDevice in all its iBook glory, today should be a happy day: it’s now available! With this, the book is now available on all of the digital platforms that I’m aware of. Here’s the complete list of where to
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Roll the Bones, writingIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at what lies ahead for Las Vegas in 2013. Seem like the right time: The New Year has its restorative elements—the celebrations, the resolutions, the fresh hopes. But, against the background of the Great Recession, it’s also another occasion to fret about what lies ahead
The Strip in 2013: Recovery and Retrenchment in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenJust an update for anyone who prefers the Kobo eReader: Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition) is now available from Kobo: Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling – Casino Edition By: David G. Schwartz Click that link to view it and, hopefully, buy a copy. Only $9.99!
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Roll the Bones, writingSince I started working on the new edition of Roll the Bones in earnest last year, the question I got most was, “will it be available as an ebook?” My answer was always, “yes.” Today that became a reality, with the release of Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition) on Kindle. Yes,
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writingI have some news to share on the book front: it’s been a long time coming, and there’s more work to be done, but you can get a copy of Roll the Bones: Casino Edition through lulu.com before the official launch. So far, lulu.com is the only place you can buy the book, and it’s
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writingVegas Seven’s nightclub issue is out today! And what better topic for the Green Felt Journal than…casinos without nightclubs: If you’ve been on the Strip in the past five years, you know that nightclubs are front-and-center at most big resorts. Which begs the question: What’s a Vegas casino look like today when you subtract the
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Vegas SevenToday’s Green Felt Journal in Vegas Seven is a look back at 2012: The people who run Las Vegas casinos were expecting a lot in 2012: a return to prosperity on the Strip, a revival downtown and a federal framework for online poker. They didn’t get everything they wanted, but at the end of the
The Year of Hope and Holding Steady in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writingThis week, I’ve been honored with another cover story in Vegas Seven magazine. Here, I step a little bit away from the gambling beat and investigate the past and potential future of National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas: The Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, which comes to the Thomas & Mack Center Dec. 6-15, is like
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Vegas Seven, writingLast week’s Green Felt Journal in Vegas Seven took a look at how the repurposing of a nondescript piece of commercial real estate just west of the Strip is full of significance: The 20,000-square-foot converted warehouse’s history is just as interesting as its future. Before the new tenants started moving in, the building was the
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Vegas SevenBunpei Yorifuji. Wonderful Life with the Elements: The Periodic Table Personified. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2012. 206 pages. Elements. Whether we like it or not, we’re all composed of them. And it’s not just us–the entire universe is composed of elements–71% of it’s hydrogen, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. And yet
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book reviewsMike Mullane. Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut. New York, Scribner, 2006. 368 pages. This is a book everyone who has any kind of interest in the history–and future–of manned space flight should read. For that matter, anyone who doesn’t have an interest in manned space flight should read it, too,
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book reviewsErnest Cline. Ready Player One. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012. 384 pages. This is a hard novel to review. I’ve got to confess that I came very close to not making it more than a twenty pages into this book. It’s set in a dystopian future, with a disillusioned teenager as the protagonist. And that’s
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book reviewsIn addition to the cover feature, I’ve got a Green Felt Journal in this week’s Vegas Seven that takes us behind the scenes, into William Hill’s sports betting war room: It’s 8:30 on a Sunday morning in October, but for the crew of bookmakers at William Hill headquarters on Grier Drive, just south of McCarran,
Inside the Trading Room in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writingThis week, I’m privileged to have a cover story in Vegas Seven. It’s about the mostly-unsung hotelier who, I think, is the real discoverer of the Las Vegas Strip, Thomas Hull: The natural advantages of Las Vegas, Fisher said, would make it “the metropolis of Nevada,” but only if properly pushed: “If a good hotel
The Columbus of Highway 91 in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writingPeter Heller. The Dog Stars: A Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. 336 pages. You know post-apocalyptic fiction has come a long way when it goes from sci-fi and horror to literary fiction. The Dog Stars is, without a doubt, the most introspective piece of post-apocalyptic writing I’ve read yet. There’s not much plot–it’s mostly the
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book reviews