If you need more 3rd-party Roll the Bones info, amazon.com now has enhanced content, including editorial reviews.
It’s also available from Barnes and Noble at bn.com now.
And if you’re just a library browser, the book is already in the Library of Congress catalog, even though there aren’t any bound copies available yet.
I’m late in posting today because I spent much of the morning doing a stint on KNPR’s State of Nevada–check the link for the details–and recording a few commentaries that will air at a later date. One of them is an elaboration (no, it’s definitely not a rehash) of my thoughts on spelling bee betting, and another is a just-for-radio piece on the role of gaming studies in today’s busy gambling world.
I just got back from recording an interview with Roger Gros for his Global Gaming Business podcast. I’ll link again when it airs. Of course, you should check out this month’s podcast as well–it’s a great discussion about the rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast.
Finally, I checked amazon and there’s been some progress on the Roll the Bones page. The cover art is now up, and as of today the book has broken the 500,000 sales rank plateau–it’s ranked higher than both Suburban Xanadu and Cutting the Wire, and it won’t even be out for four months.
I’d like to thank everyone who’s pre-ordered the book. If you’re still on the fence, check out the enhanced content for Roll the Bones on my own pages.
In light of all the hype about the opening of the remake of The Omen on 06/06/06, I’ve got a request–can anyone think of an uncanny numerological significance for 10/05/06?
So far, all I’ve got is that it the digits add up to 12, a number redolent with mystical associations.
Checking Wikipedia for October 5, I’ve found a definite shortage of material. It’s the 40th anniversary of a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor near Detroit, and, more happily, the 37th anniversary of the first broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
So if you’ve got a good numerological coincidence, etc for October 5, 2006, let me know, and if it’s something that can help in the marketing of the book, you’ll get a galley copy.
In my admittedly cursory research into the life and habits of Leonardo DaVinci while writing Roll the Bones, I was unable to find anything on his gambling proclivities. With The Da Vinci Code selling 40 million copies so far, don’t think that I wasn’t trying my best for some tie-in. “Hitler’s casino” made the cut, out of deference to the History Channel, after all (Here’s a game: take any noun, stick “Hitler’s” in front of it, and you’ve got a readymade History Channel show.)
But all I was able to find was that Da Vinci’s father borrowed money from Girolamo Cardano at some point–or maybe it was the other way around. So “Da Vinci’s roll” didn’t make it into Roll the Bones. But today I’ve found a story that’s even more interesting than the study linking DNA damage to secondhand casino smoke (as a former casino employee, I’m not exactly disinterested). It’s about gambling on The Da Vinci Code–not the new movie’s plot (which is well known by now), but it’s performance at the box office. from gamblemore.com:
The Da Vinci Code movie even has online gambling circles guessing. Everyone’s betting on just how many millions The Code will make in its opening weekend! And if the sweeping popularity of Dan Brown’s breakthrough novel is anything to go by, this is going to be one bet that shouldn’t be hard to win for even amateur internet gamblers. Opening this Friday (May 19), The Da Vinci Code film will open simultaneously in hundreds of countries and is set to smash box office records across the globe by Saturday night.
But as obvious a blockbuster as The Da Vinci Code will be this weekend, just how much of a winner the movie turns out to be is the million dollar question at Sportsbook.com. The online gambling site is laying odds and taking bets on the total gross revenue generated from combined ticket sales across the USA starting on Friday night.
The Da Vinci Code odds for gross revenues in the USA over its opening weekend (19 May to 21 May 2006) are:
$0 to $35 Million – 50:1
$35.1 to $50 Million – 25:1
$50.1 to $65 Million – 5:1
$65.1 to $80 Million – 5:2
$80.1 to $90 Million – 2:1
$90.1 to $100 Million – 5:2
$100.1 to $110 Million – 4:1
$110.1 to $120 Million – 7:1
$120.1 to $130 Million – 10:1
$130.1 Million or More – 20:1
This more more a hard sell for the sportsbook in question than a bona fide news story, but I find it interesting because it represents the intersection of two worlds: movie box office buffs and online gamblers. The Internet has given both groups a real voice. Once, you would have had to have been somehow invovled in the movie industry to know or even care about box office grosses. Now, following movies’ financial performance is a hobby for many. Ditto with betting on crazy props like this one. Technology never ceases to astound.
With the whole “Sin City” marketing strategy, it feels like a lot of Las Vegans think that they invented hedonism. I mean, people have been getting plastered and doing stupid things for millennia. I guess the genius of Las Vegas is that its promoters have boiled this down to a soundbite.
Doing research for Roll the Bones, I happened across several “Vegas stories” of wild excess that happened centuries before there was a Vegas.
Submitted for your approval, one William Byrd II. A prosperous Virginia planter, he kept details of his life in a “Secret Diary.” Much of it is pretty monotonous–he starts most days by eating boiled milk and reading in Greek and Hebrew–but one day ended in shame.
From the Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, November 23, 1711:
I rose about 7 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and some Greek in Homer. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. Several gentlemen came to my lodgings. About 10 o’clock I went to the capitol where I danced my dance and then wrote in my journal. It was very cold this morning. About 11 o’clock I went to the coffeehouse where the Governor also came and from thence we went to the capitol and read the bill concerning ports the first time. We stayed till 3 o’clock and then went to dinner to Marot’s but could get none there and therefore Colonel Lewis and I dined with Colonel Duke and I ate broiled chicken for dinner. After dinner we went to Colonel Carter’s room where we had a bowl of punch of French brandy and oranges. We talked very lewdly and were almost drunk and in that condition we went to the coffeehouse and played at dice and I lost 12 pounds. We stayed at the coffeehouse until almost 4 o’clock in the morning talking with Major Harrison. Then I went to my lodging, where I committed uncleanliness, for which I humbly beg God Almighty’s pardon.
The next morning, Byrd woke around 8. Colonel Carter “and several others” came to his room “to laugh at me for my disorder last night.” Byrd made a solemn vow never to lose more than 50 schillings while gaming–less than a week later he broke it. He turned in a 5 o’clock, wrote a few letters, then went to sleep, possibly still hung over. He closes that day’s entry with “I said my prayers and has good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.”
Byrd basically did everything that people do on their Vegas vacations today: he hung out with friends, got drunk, gambled, and committed a tantalizingly vague act of uncleanliness. Unlike most contemporary hedonists, though, he felt bad about his night of excess.
I thought this was kind of funny (especially the part about dancing his dance), but also poingant. Byrd really felt bad about whatever he did. It makes me wonder what our descendants will think of us when they excavate a crate filled with “Vegas stories” commercials and reality TV episodes.
Doing research for Roll the Bones, I’m increasingly coming to believe that gambling truly is everywhere in history. This excerpt from a Tarzan story, for example, references lots, card sharps, and a specific cheating technique, all in a few melodramatic paragraphs.
“It is the will of the majority,” announced Monsieur Thuran, “and now let us lose no time in drawing lots. It is as fair for one as for another. That three may live, one of us must die perhaps a few hours sooner than otherwise.”
Then he began his preparation for the lottery of death, while Jane Porter sat wide-eyed and horrified at thought of the thing that she was about to witness. Monsieur Thuran spread his coat upon the bottom of the boat, and then from a handful of money he selected six franc pieces. The other two men bent close above him as he inspected them. Finally he handed them all to Clayton.
“Look at them carefully,” he said. “The oldest date is eighteen-seventy-five, and there is only one of that year.”
Clayton and the sailor inspected each coin. To them there seemed not the slightest difference that could be detected other than the dates. They were quite satisfied. Had they known that Monsieur Thuran’s past experience as a card sharp had trained his sense of touch to so fine a point that he could almost differentiate between cards by the mere feel of them, they would scarcely have felt that the plan was so entirely fair. The 1875 piece was a hair thinner than the other coins, but neither Clayton nor Spider could have detected it without the aid of a micrometer.
“In what order shall we draw?” asked Monsieur Thuran, knowing from past experience that the majority of men always prefer last chance in a lottery where the single prize is some distasteful thing–there is always the chance and the hope that another will draw it first. Monsieur Thuran, for reasons of his own, preferred to draw first if the drawing should happen to require a second adventure beneath the coat.
And so when Spider elected to draw last he graciously offered to take the first chance himself. His hand was under the coat for but a moment, yet those quick, deft fingers had felt of each coin, and found and discarded the fatal piece. When he brought forth his hand it contained an 1888 franc piece. Then Clayton drew. Jane Porter leaned forward with a tense and horrified expression on her face as the hand of the man she was to marry groped about beneath the coat. Presently he withdrew it, a franc piece lying in the palm. For an instant he dared not look, but Monsieur Thuran, who had leaned nearer to see the date, exclaimed that he was safe.
Jane Porter sank weak and trembling against the side of the boat. She felt sick and dizzy. And now, if Spider should not draw the 1875 piece she must endure the whole horrid thing again.
I have a challenge for all of you: provide a one-paragraph explanation of what precipitated the sortilege described here, and what happens next. Post it as a comment.
I’m getting back to work on my chapter about British imperialism and gambling.
The day has arrived…after about a year of research and writing, I’ve finished the first draft of Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling.
What does this mean for you, the reader? A chance to do some more reading. Gotham will be bringing the book out next June, so if you’ve ever bemoaned the lack of a one-volume comprehensive history of gambling, you’ll have a few hundred pages of beach reading for ’06. Or something to pass the time with while your friends are playing “just one more hand” at the tables. Unless you’re in Macau, where bringing books into the casino is strictly forbidden, as the word “book” has unlucky connotations. See, you haven’t even started reading, and you’ve already learned something (unless, of course, you’ve been to Macau).
For me, this is the culmination of a lot of work, and the prelude to even more. Right now the manuscript is 768 pages in MS Word, which translates to about 500 in actual book form. I’m guessing that the ideal book will be a bit shorter, so I’ve got some revising to do. This is more than twice as long as Cutting the Wire, which is less than 300 pages in book form.
I’ll be posting more info on the Roll the Bones page as I get it, but here are some little facts:
- manuscript structure: 12 chapters plus prologue and epilogue
- total manuscript pages: 768
- word count: appro. 190,000 (The next time I teach a class and get a student complaining about a 500-word essay…forget about it)
- first use of word “gambling:” page 4, preface
I tried to be comprehensive, so there are section on gambling from all around the world. The thing that should get the History Channel excited, though, is that I even have a paragraph or two on Hitler’s Casino. Seriously. We’ll see if that makes it through the revising.
What’s next? Selecting the photos and revising, then starting work on my next project, which I’d like to see come out in 2008. I don’t have anything in writing yet, but I’m leaning towards a biography for this one. After spending a year writing about everything to do with gambling, I’m looking forward to a more focused narrative.
Thanks to everyone who gave me support during this writing. Doing this website has been a lot of fun, but writing the book, particularly during the past few months, has cut into the time I can spend on it. I’m looking to start reading for pleasure again and getting a few reviews up: I owe Brian Rouff one for Dice Angel, and I’m finally going to start Money Shot. I’m just finishing Deke Castleman’s Whale Hunt in the Desert, which is an interesting inside take on the VIP casino host world. Again, you the reader benefit!
So just when I’m thinking that I’m having a good day Thursday, here comes news that someone else is having an even better day: an unidentified Rhode Island guest at Isle of Capri Biloxi hit the quarter Wheel of Fortune slots for $1,058,459.34. Based on my year of research into 7000 years of gambling history, my advice is to quit while you’re ahead.
As my regular readers know, writing Roll the Bones has been taking up most of my time for the past few months. I’ve shared a few of the insights I’ve learned, but for the most part I’ve kept the project under wraps.
Today I reached a significant milestone, so I’m making an announcement: I’m two-thirds done the first draft. I’ve finished my chapters on ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern gambling, gambling in the British empire, 19th century European spa gambling, and Monte Carlo.
What’s left, you might wonder? Only, as Borat might say, the U S and A. In other words, I’ve got three chapters in which to condense the history of gambling in America (including, as things stand now, one whole chapter on Nevada gambling history). Once I finish that, I have the 12th and final chapter–about the international expansion of gambling in the 20th and 21st centuries–and then I am onto my next project.
Check out the Roll the Bones page to learn more about my progress, and how you can help.
Poring through an old history of Monaco in my research for Roll the Bones, I learned that Carnegie’s Diplodocus was discovered during the excavations for a rail line.
I found this mildly interesting. What a 19th century industrialist has to do with a prehistoric dinosaur, and why the long-necked creature was messing around near Monaco, I’ll leave to your imagination.
I’ve always thought that being a diplodocus would be kind of a mixed blessing. Sure, you’ve got the long neck and everything, but would anyone take you seriously with a name like that? He is a goofy-looking fellow though, isn’t he?
“I don’t want to be the one to call it the dumbing down of Britain, but I think its the dumbing down of Britain.”
–Warren Lush, chief oddsmaker at Ladbrokes, on the huge upswing in novelty betting on everything from televised talent shows to whether someone will live to be 100. You can read the full story of novelty betting here: baltimoresun.com – English risk odds on oddest of wagers.
This came to my attention because I’m currently writing the chapter of Roll the Bones dealing with the initial English gaming mania (1660-1750), and novelty betting was huge back then, too.
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