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 Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything
by Kevin
Cook
The biography of Titanic
Thompson recounts a life that is so outlandish you almost couldn't make it
up.
A gambler and hustler who started out in the early twentieth
century, Titanic travelled America playing poker, gambling on golf games and
placing bets on anything he could think of. He married 5 times and murdered 5
men and lived a life so interesting it could quite easily be made into a film.
The stories of his early exploits as a child are a bit Tom Sawyer,
where he hustles people and uses their own greed against them. His later life
show him making bets of such audacity that although highly unscrupulous, you
can't help but be impressed with his ingenuity and bare-faced cheek. Using
sleight of hand, card marking and other scams with various accomplices Titanic
made vast sums of money from things like games of poker, betting on golf games
and how many melons may be in a lorry he sees drive past, to tossing a
(secretly weighted) bottle cap over a block in distance.
This book
portrays Titanic as a ruthless gambler and yet at the same time gentlemanly and
generous and it's a wonder he hasn't been heard of more often. Other reviewers
on Amazon have noted this book has an almost tabloid quality to the writing and
whilst I agree it doesn't have a great deal of depth and skims over some
details (like his brief time in jail), the writing style allows you to fly
through this in no time and you get caught up in the chicanery and hustling on
offer.
Overall, this is an entertaining and easy read of the life of a
quirky, cunning and fascinating character. Worth taking a punt on and giving it
a read.
Paperback: - 256 pages - W.
W. Norton & Co. (21 Jan 2011)  £7.99  $19.73
 Where Did
it All Go Right?
by Al Alvarez
Poker player, novelist, critic, rock-climber, failed suicide--Al
Alvarez is a man of many parts and they are all presented here with endearing
candour. He records that "my first 30 years were purgatory"--but that in
retrospect, the next 40 were so blissfully happy as to seem almost uneventful
in comparison. So the greater part of this autobiography is occupied with those
first 30, storm-tossed years.
It starts in pre-war London, studying the
different strands of the British Jewish community. His mother and father both
came from very different families, and he writes about the trials of their
troubled relationship. He then carries on the story to school, and his early
love of poetry, rugger and boxing. Then he goes to Oxford, where he becomes
disinterested in the petty arguements of academia.
Then comes an endless
list of anecdotes about all of the key poets in the 1950s and 60s (whilst Al
worked in America and as poetry editor of the Observer). Each person comes to
life through Al's witty, insightful writing.
Alvarez lived and worked
around some very interesting famous people, and here he dishes the dirt, and
some praise too.
Paperback - 400 pages -
Bloomsbury Publishing (18 Mar 2002) £8.99 $10.62
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