Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker

Rating:
Summary: Fun reading
Review: This is an excellent book. A real life personal story wrapped around a murder mystery/trial story, the every-man poker player will love Bad Jim and his assault on the WSOP. Everyone wants to play there and everyone wants to win. McManus came 5th and his story is compelling and truly fun reading. Plus you learn the work BURK. What could be better than that?

Rating:
Summary: A good book hurt by too much rambling
Review: As some reviewers have commented, Fifth Street, is not Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But it's not supposed to be. Even though both have the common premise of an author writing about himself while on a journalistic assignment to Las Vegas, their purposes and approach are very different. Comparing McManus' book to Thompson's doesn't provide insight into either.

As for Fifth Street itself, McManus is at his best when writing as a journalist, even though he seems to take some license with the facts related to Ted Binion's murder. The juxtaposition of a No-Limit poker tournament and the death of someone who lived without limits is a terrific premise. The book is best when it sticks to these topics.

The author's description of the poker tournament becomes fascinating as he finds himself playing at the final table with some of the world's best players. His descriptions of the thinking process of top poker players and how they interact are insightful and very well written. But his focus on the tournament detracts from writing about the trial and bringing the two topics together in a common theme. The book may have been better if he'd lost in the early rounds and kept a broader perspective.

Unfortunately, the book becomes about the author's personal life. But given the putative premise, McManus' diversions to discuss his and his wife's family history, potty training of his children, and other extended diversions, distract from the strength of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Positively Fun Reading!
Review: The first line is an attention-grabber, worthy of a great true crime book, but POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET is so much more than that. On a long shot, McManus enters the World Series of Poker when he goes out to Vegas to cover it and the Binion murder trial for HARPER'S magazine. He does a great job of covering it all, including history of poker and Vegas and the Horseshoe, his own personal history as a poker player and sketches of his fellow contenders, as well as the reactions of his wife as he first enters the tournament, then slowly progresses. He renders it in a style that gives us the facts but also gives us access to the hyper-articulate and often just plain hyper (and always entertaining) stream of consciousness patter constantly going on in his brain.

Rating:
Summary: Narcissistic Gonzo Lite
Review: I bought this book hoping for the atmospherics of the World Series of Poker plus insightful coverage of Ted's Binion's murder & the subsequent trial. That stuff can be found, but for the most part the book is a cut-rate Hunter S. Thompson knock-off primarily focussed on the author's fascination with himself. Do you want to learn detailed minutia about 4 or 5 prior generations of McManus's? It's there. Are you interested in all the intimate details of the author's tawdry behavior in casino lounges? It's there. If you caught the guy on one of the episodes of the WSP on ESPN, you already know more about this pompous lunkhead than you need to (the "You called with a jack high?" episode -- yup, he's the one). I recommend instead Alvarez's "The Biggest Game in Town." Somewhat outdated, but at least that guy can write.

Rating:
Summary: Too long...Much too long
Review: This book has some good parts, but it's much too long for what it is. McManus tries too hard at times, and ends up writing too much about the unimportant. One thing that surprised me is that half of the book is about the death of Ted Binion and the whole scandal surrounding it. McManus makes the book too personal at times. It's almost like a journal, and although he might care about his own hourly activities, we don't. We also don't care about his family and his children. A good editor could have made this book much better. How sad. Better stick with the poker McManus, because you're not much of a writer.

Rating:
Summary: Best poker book written in last ten years
Review: Author James McManus takes the reader on a journey through the World Series of Poker, the biggest card event (and biggest sporting event, purse-wise) in history from a very personal perspective: as an entrant.
Parlaying a $4,000 advance from Harper's into a $10,000 entry fee seems like a monstrous accomplishment in its own right. But McManus then steamrolls his way deeper and deeper into the tournament, squaring off against talent-laden opponents including his sometimes-mentor but current adversary TJ Cloutier. Along the way, McManus covers the murder trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, who were accused of murdering Ted Binion.
McManus delves into history to create backstory for the trial, his own poker skills, and the game of poker itself, and integrates all of the knowledge, along with scores of literary references, into a personal narrative that can be riveting, and which also provides useful information for an aspiring poker player.
The Good and the Bad:
Early on in this book, I thought that the nonstop literary references and the creation of a dichotomy between "Good Jim" (the author at his best) and "Bad Jim" (the author at all other times) were distracting, somewhat highfalutin', and often forced. He makes references to Hunter Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and A. Alvarez (The Biggest Game in Town), both of whom created intelligent and respected books out of their Las Vegas pilgrimages. It seemed as if McManus was trying, none too subtly, to insert himself into a respected pantheon of authors, and I have to admit that I resented him for it.
But as McManus's adventure in Las Vegas develops, I grew to enjoy his authorial voice more, and eventually found the thrills of his poker experiences to more than make up for any shortcomings I found in the text. The Good Jim/Bad Jim device at first seemed like a way to evade responsibility for making bad choices (Hey, don't blame me! I'm Good Jim!). In retrospect, however, that device also allows him to disown and reject his negative impulses without giving up any of his pride or values. He knows that Bad Jim is bad, and can therefore reject those influences more readily.
McManus also brings us a refreshing dose of honesty, both at the poker table and in his personal life. He describes the thoughts behind his poker decisions as they come, and manages to take credit where due without being overbearing, while at the same time disclose those moments when he had totally misread his opponents. I contrast this book favorably with a poker advice book by professional Phil Helmuth, who never tells an anecdote in which he makes the wrong decision.
By giving a comprehensive account of the murder trials, and delving into the history of poker as it evolved, McManus waters down the most exciting aspects of his book, but this is a small criticism; it's not as if those topics are boring in the slightest. It's just that they lack the raw power of the author facing off against icons of the game.
The only digression that I found to be inappropriate, and even puzzling, was when McManus devotes a few pages to the biological reasons behind the impulses that men feel to cheat on their wives. Interesting? Yes. But it came off as slightly defensive for the author who rarely lets a woman go by without mentioning her level of physical attractiveness, and who openly courts marital disaster by hobnobbing intimately with strippers and attractive opportunists. We'll call his chapter noting the progress of women to the top of the game a penance for these transgressions.
But as a reader and a poker player, I don't really care about how bad Bad Jim can be. I demand to be entertained and instructed, and this book accomplished both, in spades. I feel like it improved my game, and also gave me things outside of the game of poker to think about. Was McManus trying to insert himself into a pantheon of highly respected books about the game? Probably. But the important thing is that he belongs there.


Rating:
Summary: Not Entirely Timely
Review: Positively Fifth Street, written by James McManus, is a book about two things, the mysterious death of Ted Binion (former owner of the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas) and James McManus. It's not entirely an ego trip. McManus surprised everyone, including himself, by reaching the final table in the World Series of Poker, a tournament he entered as part of the research he was doing for this book.

McManus goes back and forth between the suspected murder of Binion and his upward climb in the tournament. The passages about Binion's death are the most riveting. McManus thinks he has his murderer in Sandy Murphy, Ted's beautiful and easy to hate girlfriend. And this is the main problem with the book, as of 2004 Sandy (and her lover Rick Tabash) were acquitted of the murder. The book, written in 2003, gives us a vague sense that justice was done...the evil Sandy and Ted were found guilty and put in jail, but the case was more complicated than that and the author, distracted by his own story, ends up doing little to investigate what was really going on.

The poker side of the book also has it's faults, McManus is too close to the story to provide smart objective reporting. He does offer some excellent advice in how to not only play poker but to practice for tournament poker play. He also does an excellent job in conveying all the fears, joys, anxieties, highs and lows that go along in tournament play.

If you're a poker player or want to be, get the book and read the poker chapters. If you're a mystery lover, wait 'til a more complete book comes out on the Ted Binion case. If you're just looking for a good, consistent read...keep looking.


Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, informative and wildly entertaining
Review: Answer the following questions:

1) Have you ever watched the World Series of Poker on ESPN and found it entertaining?

2) Did you like the movie Rounders?

3) Do you watch Court TV?

4) Do you enjoy a book that propels you forward from chapter to chapter?

If you answered "yes" to even ONE of those questions, you will enjoy this book. It's highest-stakes gambling written against the backdrop of a grisly murder trial (or is it a murder trial written against the backdrop of the WSOP?) A fun summer read and guaranteed to make you laugh out loud at least a few times.

Rating:
Summary: Long winded, Tiring.
Review: When the author decides to stick to one subject the book isnt bad. But going off on multi-page tangents that add little to the story really gets tiring. The WSOP related stuff was good, the murder stuff was ok, the other 150 pages are just excruciating. Unfortunately for the reader they are all entertwined so to get one you have to go through all.

IMHO, I thought the author was trying to copy Alvarez's (Biggest Game in Town) style, but where Alvarez would go off on a paragraph or two to fill in a story, this author would go on for pages.

Rating:
Summary: Were it not for the narrator...
Review: The author is sterling when he decides to discuss the Binion murder and its outcome. He possesses a wonderful knowledge of poker and illuminates his readers considerably through the facts and history that he shares. His success in the tournament is admirable and rather amazing.

Unfortunately, he teases us with the Binion Las Vegas Confidential angle intermittently throughout the book. Its 400 page length becomes excruciating as his need to discuss himself overpowers his desire to tell a tale. In the end we get a bit of a muddle.

Yet, overall, the book is definitely worth reading and informative even if McManus is one of the most self-indulgent writers I've ever encountered. His constant personalizations ("Bad Jim"/"Good Jim") are pure torture. He is not nearly as interesting as the coverage assignment he received from Harpers.

This is really an autobiography of a sensitive, New Age academic who appears to have completely bought into feminism, post-modernism, chic leftism, multiculturalism, and every other theory to come out of the narcissistic 1960s. Had he merely given a journalistic account of the murder and the WSOP tournament in 200 pages I would have given him, in good faith, five stars for his effort, but his self-fascination degrades the product at every turn.

Mr. McManus is a novelist and a writing instructor which is evident in his extensive vocabulary and occasional witty turn of phrase. Yet he seems to use extraneous metaphor after extraneous metaphor in chapter after chapter. Indeed, the thing that is most characteristic of "Positively Fifth Street" is its overwriting. Is someone who takes 500 words to say what he could in 50 really a great writer? I don't think so.