by Doug J. Swanson (Get the Book)
Benny Binion is not as well known as Bugsy Seigel, who created Las Vegas, but, as crime-novelist Swanson makes clear in this rollicking biography, Binion also deserves his place in the Sin City Hall of Fame. Born poor in rural Texas in 1904, Binion soon was on the road with his horse-trader father. The game, Swanson recounts, was to trade a bad horse for a good horse, a scam requiring plenty of chutzpah. Benny soon realized the downside the best you could do was end up with a better horse but he also noticed that the gamblers who ran the games in which the traders lost what little money they had were doing just fine. In a few years, he was running the numbers game in the black neighborhoods of Dallas. After scaring off or killing a few too many rivals, Benny found that Dallas had become a bit too hot for comfort, sending him to Vegas, where he carved out a dominant spot for himself and eventually had the crazy idea of hosting something he decided to call the World Series of Poker. Swanson, a Dallas Morning News editor when he's not writing crime novels, has turned the biography of Binion into a great piece of narrative nonfiction that reads like, well, a great crime novel. When Las Vegas gets its faux Mt. Rushmore (and can that day be far off?), Benny's mug will be there, right alongside Bugsy's.
by Jan Swafford (Get the Book)
Winner of the PEN/Winship Award and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Swafford's Ives is a wonder of music biography; the author, who teaches at Boston Conservatory, re-created the very sounds surrounding Ives in childhood to help us understand his daring musicianship. Here, Swafford offers a study of Beethoven, ten years in the making, that investigates the ideas tumbling through the air in Enlightenment-era Bonn so that we can see how Beethoven and his music were shaped. With a 25,000-copy first printing.
by Joseph Luzzi (Get the Book)
The American-born son of poor but tough Calabrian immigrants, Luzzi yearned for the Italy of Dante and Michelangelo, not the one of sharp cheese and salted anchovies. But while building a distinguished scholarly career writing about Italian high culture, the very different Italy of his parents continued to haunt him with the smells of its cooking, the calloused hands of his uncles, and the unsentimental way in which his mother dispatched animals for the family table. Luzzi is not, of course, the first to note the distance between these two Italies as he notes, Tony Soprano grappled with the same issue but the contrasting ideals provide Luzzi with a lens through which to examine Italy and the Italian American experience, especially that of his family. In part, he is trying to puzzle through the miseria of his parents, who survived the war to suffer a lifetime of backbreaking labor and enduring but pugnacious love. But when Luzzi shares his deepest pain the sudden death of his pregnant wife in a car accident his investigations of his extended family turn powerfully poignant, for it was they who cared for his infant daughter while he curled in a fetal position in his childhood bed. The result is a memoir that balances thoughtful observation with feelings that, one senses, still remain quite raw. --Booklist
by Ben Montgomery (Get the Book)
In 1955, at 67, Gatewood left her small Ohio town and her 11 children and 23 grandchildren and set off to trek the Appalachian Trail. She'd long been fascinated by the 2,050-mile trail and was particularly lured by the fact that no woman had ever hiked it alone. Knowing her family wouldn't approve, she didn't tell them when she set out with a little 17-pound sack of supplies and no tent or sleeping bag. Journalist Montgomery draws on interviews with Gatewood's surviving family members and hikers she met on her five-month journey as well as news accounts and Gatewood's diaries to offer a portrait of a determined woman, whose trek inspired other hikers and brought attention to the neglect of the Appalachian Trail. She became a hiking celebrity, appearing on television with Groucho Marx and Art Linkletter. Montgomery intertwines details of Gatewood's hike with recollections from her early life and difficult marriage. Maps of the trail and photos from Gatewood's early life enhance this inspiring story. --Booklist
