Introduced shortly after the United States declared its independence, poker's growth and development has paralleled that of America itself. As a gambling game with mass appeal, poker has been played by presidents and peasants, at kitchen tables and final tables, for matchsticks and millions. ----- First came the hands, then came the stories -- some true, some pure bluffs, and many in between. In Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America's Favorite Card Game, Martin Harris shares these stories while chronicling poker's progress from 19th-century steamboats and saloons to 21st-century virtual tables online, including: * Poker on the Mississippi * Poker in the Movies * Poker in the Old West * Poker on the Newsstand * Poker in the Civil War * Poker in Literature * Poker on the Bookshelf * Poker in Music * Poker in the White House * Poker on Television * Poker During Wartime * Poker on the Computer ----- From Mark Twain to "Dogs Playing Poker" to W.C. Fields to John Wayne to A Streetcar Named Desire to the Cold War to Kenny Rogers to ESPN to Star Trek: The Next Generation and beyond, Poker & Pop Culture provides a comprehensive survey of cultural productions in which poker is of thematic importance, showing how the game's portrayal in the mainstream has increased poker's relevance to American history and shaped the way we think about the game and its significance.
Martin Harris is a writer, teacher, and poker reporter who has covered the game for the last dozen years. He earned a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University at Bloomington and has taught full- and part-time at the university level for two decades. He currently teaches in the American Studies program at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where his courses include "Poker in American Film and Culture" and "Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics."
I always wondered what 'exhaustively researched' really meant. Now I know. Harris has unearthed a staggering array of juicy poker facts and lore from literature, movies, television, music and history, but his accomplishment goes far beyond its remarkable thoroughness, giving context, stature and meaning to America's game, conveying it all in a delightfully elegant prose that is as heady and surprising as hitting a one-outer on the river. Poker & Pop Culture is a fist-pumping winner of a book.--Peter Alson, Author of Take Me to the River and co-author of One of a Kind This book had to be written, and only one person could write it. Poker's place in our culture has been Martin's passion and expertise as long as I've known him. Poker is a story of a thousand stories, and they're all here.--Tommy Angelo, Author of Elements of Poker and Painless Poker A thorough, well-informed and highly entertaining exploration of the cultural riches bred by poker, explaining why the game remains so quintessentially American while growing ever more universal.--Anthony Holden, Author of Big Deal and Bigger Deal Martin Harris's Poker & Pop Culture is a lively, well researched, highly readable account of the game's hold on the popular imagination, revealing its history -- from Shakespeare to ESPN, Flash Kate to James Bond, Tony Soprano to Daniel Negreanu -- with 1,001 telling details. A+ Americana, and then some--James McManus, Author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full
