Rating: 
Summary: A good-but-not-as-great-as-the-author-thinks-it-is book
Review: McManus' foray into the world of Las Vegas tournament poker is quite compelling, so much so that I, a devout non-gambler, began looking into other poker books and simulation games as he did; I've also become a fan of ESPN and Travel Channel poker. I thought there was just enough Vegas and poker history here. The Binion murder trial stuff was interesting as well, if excessively lurid and sensationalized in the openning chapter. What gets supremely annoying, however, is the author's failure to get out of the way of his own book. He seems to have operated on the principle that whatever he happened to be thinking about or doing on any given writing day was prime material for the book - how else to explain weird asides like the Sylvia Plath disquisiton that intrudes on page 60 or so? One grows weary reading about his family, his relationship with his wife, Good/Bad Jim, etc. So, do read the book if it interests you, but don't be afraid to skip any chapter or section that strays from the tournament or the Binion trial. (The author's self-indulgent self-loathing does offer the reader some useful instruction: should you find yourself in a festive mood while in Las Vegas or wherever, and decide to treat yourself to a lap-dance, DO NOT tell your wife about it, no matter how special you think your relationship is).
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderfully entertaining...
Review: This book about Binion's World Series of Poker will certainly entertain you. The author visits the tournament and ends up competing for the final prize. Regardless of whether or not you play poker, you will greatly enjoy this book. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: 5th place in the WSOP isnt good enough for its own book
Review: McManus is a writer for Harpers Magazine as well as a writing teacher, somewhere below on that list he’s a long time poker player. Old players like Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim honed their skills through decades of play but McManus admittedly extracted most of what he knows about Hold Em’ from reading poker books, though he was corrupted by summer stays at his grandparents’ house as a kid. With an advance of a few thousand dollars to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000 for Harpers Magazine, he elected to try a different perspective and attempt to get his research by actually entering the tournament. The entry for the main tournament was $10,000 so the advance was a great deal short of just an straight out buy in entry. McManus had to score at least one satellite tournament win to assure him a seat. The book has 3 main stories, James McManus’ progression through the WSOP, the murder trial, James McManus’ life in respect to the whole ordeal. The murder story concerns the clout of the former owner of the Horshoe Casino, Ted Binion (hosts the World Series of Poker) by his estranged girlfriend Sandy Murphy and mutual friend of theirs, Rick Tabish. In the first few pages it is painfully obvious McManus’ has a well honed ability to construct sentences and resurrect words that have accumulated years of dust to phrase them with. I opt not to agree with some of the other reviewers on the format of inter mixing the stories together because there is a need for character building to pull off the resulting plot. If he were to just include the World Serious of Poker portion, it would have just been another poker book about a guy who placed only 5th and not a writer there to investigate two stories. Anything less than first place certainly could not warrant a story on its own merits so I enjoy this book as is.
Rating:
Summary: Being the hero of your own book--masterfully told
Review: I spent two days lost in this book. Quite a performance by Jim McManus, and I don't mean only the writing. For a fancy wordsmith, he is one heck of a poker player. To come to Las Vegas and play in your first tournament and make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker is one very fine achievement. Jim McManus, 49-year-old novelist, poet, teacher, and sometime journalist on assignment in Las Vegas for Harper's Magazine takes part of his $4,000 retainer and buys into a satellite tournament hoping to win a pass to play in the big one, the $10,000 buy-in no limit hold'em event that annually decides the world championship of poker. Not coincidentally he is also covering the trial of Sandy Murphy, a saucy, skanky Vegas lap dancer and her linebacker beau Rick Tabish who are accused of the murder of Ted Binion, brother of Becky Behnen, host of the tournament, and one of the sons of Benny Binion, the long time owner of the sponsoring Horseshoe casino. What results is a suberb example of a genre that I call "participatory journalism," the sort of thing the made George Plimpton, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson and some other very fine writers famous. What happens in participatory journalism is the journalist himself joins in the action and becomes part of the story. Because of McManus's cleverness with the pasteboards (actually they're made of plastic of course), his discipline, and because he did indeed get lucky a time or two on Positively Fifth Street, his experience became more than just part of the story. As he covers the trial and the World Series of poker from the inside, he focuses intimately--sometimes perhaps too intimately--on himself and what it was like, first person singular, to play the kind of high stakes poker that most of us can only dream about. And to win. Not all the marbles but enough of them to pay off the mortgage and, as he says, maybe pay for a semester of college for a daughter in 2016. Reading this book--*living* this book, I might say, because it is such a vivid and engaging romp through some things and a part of the world that I know very well--was an adrenaline pumping and humbling experience for me, poker player and writer myself. I was dazzled at times by the sheer energy of his prose, at the worldly-wise (and wise-acre) metaphors, references and striking allusions that jump off the page as adroitly expressed and appropriately placed as notes in a symphony--a modern symphony with discordance and harmony splashed out with wild and sardonic energy. Or maybe I should say, Jim McManus writes like a poet with an ear for the vernacular and an eye for the kill. He begins with an informed imagination on just how handcuffed Ted Binion was "burked" to death with girlfriend Sandy Murphy naked on his chest and big boy Rick Tabish forcing a turkey baster full of heroin and Xanax down his throat while holding the millionaire's nose shut. Not a pretty way to die. Now enter the journalist, perhaps a bit like Jackson Browne's "The Pretender," no longer young and strong, in fact a little strung out on pills and booze and cigs, but a forty-nine year-old still in charge of himself, with a second family and some bills to pay, some temptations to resist, some oats to sow, a man torn between the irresponsible machinations of "Bad Jim" and the socially and domestically appropriate behaviors of "Good Jim," a guy who calls his young wife at least once a day while managing to interview nearly naked lap dancers at their place of work on his lap without losing his...composure. But what McManus does best is weave an exciting account of how he played cards, what his opponents were like, how he behaved and covered the stories, and how made the right calls and the right lay downs and especially how he sat on his hands when he needed to and nursed his stack so that was able to arrive, against some very stiff odds and against some very good players, at the final table. He highlights several of the pivotal pots during his nearly miraculous run by telling us what cards he held, what cards his opponents held, what flopped, what the turn card was, and especially what hit the felt on fifth street. He gets it all right and crystal clear and he reveals his bad reads and questionable plays as well as his good ones. He shows the camaraderie and the competition among the players and does it all in such a vivid manner that we feel we are there with him. Along the way he quotes from Dante and Edward O. Wilson, Dostoevski and Jared Diamond, etc. on human nature past and present. He does get a little self-indulgent at times (although personally I think he has license) and some readers might want to skip the digressions into his youth and flash past some of the mini book reviews and philosophic arias and just stay with the story. It's one of the best I've ever read and captures a culture, and a time and a place, as only a master of the craft could.
Rating:
Summary: A book that gets better every 50 pages.
Review: Positively Fifth Street is one of those rare nonfiction books that read like a great first person novel. It doesn't hurt that McManus follows in the gonzo tradition of Hunter Thompson on his journey. The book begins with McManus a professor and freelance writer who is hired to write a story on how women are appearing more and more at the World Series of Poker and how women are becoming more visible in the game. But this is no ordinary World Series, because the Binion family that has run the event every year since its founding is distracted by the murder trial of sibling, Ted Binion. And to top it off, author, narrator, Jim McManus is also a bit of a poker player himself. Jim wants to enter the tournament with his writing advance, but he doesn't have enough money. He has two college aged children and two young children at home and nothing but bills. With all of the tension of the story Jim is sent to cover, his own personal tensions slowly become the center of the book, especially after he enters the tournament and goes up against famous players, including the author of Jim's favorite tournament book, TJ Cloutier. I found the writing very immediate like a conversation that happens immediately after the event. I also found the tension internal and external was enough to sustain the multiple storylines. McManus seems to end each section of commentary at a natural conclusion and this makes the transitions easy to follow. I enjoyed Alvarez' great history ONLY GAME IN TOWN and found Anthony Holden's BIG DEAL quite interesting, but neither was as fun to read for me as POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET. This is the kind of book that you can enjoy regardless of your poker knowledge. It may even convince you to take up the game.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: I truly don't understand the fuss made about this pretentious and very awkwardly written book. It's really awful and unbelievably self-indulgent. If you want stories about poker told with some elegance I suggest the works of Alvarez (Biggest Game), Holden (Big Deal), and Konik (Telling Lies). This one is a complete mess.
Rating: 
Summary: Self-Conscious Effort
Review: Parts of this book were great. In particular, those parts recounting the author's play in the World Series of Poker, the history of card-playing, specifially poker, and his primer on the game of Texas Hold 'Em and its strategy. Unfortunately, I think the author was self-conscious about making himself the star of the book. He therefore added a superfluous account of the murder of Ted Binion and parts of the trial of his accused murderes. These parts did not add to the book, but they did not detract either. Other parts did detract, however. For instance, there was no need for a chapter on an obscure poet who had committed suicide (except perhaps to show that the author considered himself a poet before an autobiographer). So also his many pages devoted to other works on poker were tedious. Worst, he repeatedly tried to put poker onto a tremendously lofty plain by making grand philosophical leaps about its place in humankind. This book easily would have been a four star, perhaps a five star, effort if the author had stuck to the game of poker generally, its strategy and the hugely entertaining recap of his participation in the tournament. An editor should have told him it would have been okay to leave it at that.
Rating:
Summary: Some good, some bad, worth reading overall.
Review: Jim McManus, Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2003) Jim McManus made the final table at the World Series of Poker. That alone should make any poker player want to pick this book up and read it immediately. It gets better when you realize that McManus went in as the rankest of rank amateurs, the guy whose previous poker career revolved around the $3-$6 Hold 'em game at the local VFW. Yes, folks, Jim McManus is living proof that anyone CAN do it. And, as This American Life host Ira Glass says on the back cover, the poker writing to be found here really is some of the best sports writing you are likely to ever see; McManus' descriptions are easily the equal of Laura Hillenbrand's race descriptions in Seabiscuit (and this is high praise indeed). Its when McManus gets off the subject of poker that things tend to go downhill. Unfortunately, this happens often. McManus was in Vegas for the purpose of covering the Murphy/Tabish trial (Murphy and Tabish were accused of murdering Ted Binion, wayward son of the owner of the casino where the World Series of Poker is held*), and much of the book details McManus' attempts to get at the meat of the psyches of Binion, Murphy, and Tabish, in order to write the article. Despite the tenuous connections McManus makes between murder and poker towards the end of the book, these are two separate pieces, and should have been treated as such. Worth reading for the cards. Skim the rest. *** * For the sticklers in the audience: yes, "is" is the correct tense. Binion's reopened on April 1, 2004.
Rating:
Summary: Completely disjointed, but has its merits
Review: I picked this up expecting to read an interesting social and cultural history of poker, the World Series of Poker in particular. While I got that in part from this book, I also was treated to a bunch of other stories I wasn't interested in. McManus goes to Vegas ostensibly to cover the progress of women players in the WSOP. He ends up spending his advance on getting into the tournament and placing fifth to everyone's surprise. This in itself is an interesting story. But for some reason McManus insists on offering the readers weird sidetrips. Ten pages on Sylvia Plath, his trips to strip bars, a whole chapter on his family history. Even as I was reading it, I was confused about what on earth his grandfather's trip to the British Isles during WWI had to do with poker. Turns out, nothing. McManus just likes talking. He even gives us illustrations of his grandfather's letters written while on duty, letters in no way related to poker. McManus also assumes we are interested in his sexual exploits and the relationship between him and his wife. I don't know about you, but the last thing I want to know is how his wife fills out a Victoria's Secret teddy, and how hard it is for him to be "Good Jim" (his persona...he also has a "Bad Jim"). Icky. The murder trial of Ted Binion is a nice sidestory, but McManus doesn't develop it enough. It makes random appearances, often at the stretch of literary credibility. We get to hear comparisons between poker, Ted Binion, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the author all in one sentence. If you are confused, you should be. All this aside, the poker story itself is interesting. I don't know anything about poker, so found it hard to follow the lingo at times, but this wasn't a major obstacle for me. While he's playing in the championship, McManus can be quite a good tourguide, even gonzo at times. One only wishes he would have stuck with this storyline, and left his wife's lingerie out of it.
Rating:
Summary: Good read--especially the scenes from the poker table
Review: The best parts of McManus' book are by far the scenes he depicts at the poker table. He's a journalist who makes it to the final table at the WSOP and lives to tell about it, so if you enjoy reading well-written pieces about Texas hold'em, you'll like the book. McManus' style is easy to follow and his honesty is compelling. I especially enjoyed his accounts of the other WSOP competitors and his feelings toward them during play--hilarious and so true! About half the book is spent on an account of the Ted Binion murder trial, and for me, things slowed down at that point. I would have rather the two separate stories find their way into two separate books. That's my lone beef about Positively Fifth Street, however. All-in-all I liked it. If you're a poker fan, I'm betting you'll like it too.
| 
