Book News: Poker & Pop Culture Now Available!

Checking in again to let everyone know my book Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game is now out! No more preordering and waiting... order it today and you’ll have it right away.

I received some author copies a short while back, and earlier this week I got a copy of the e-book from D&B Poker as well. Here is a short video that provides a glimpse of both -- take a look:

Valerie Cross also wrote a nice piece about me and the book for PokerNews last week. Check it out: “Martin Harris Shares Inspirations for New Book ‘Poker and Pop Culture.’”

Right now you can order the paperback from Amazon, and I imagine the e-book version is going to show up there soon as well. Meanwhile both the paperback and e-book can be ordered at the D&B Poker site. In fact, if you get the e-book from D&B, we’ve added a special bonus “appendix” that includes a list of “The Top 100 Poker Movies” with summaries, memorable quotes, and links to the films’ IMDB entries. (The appendix won’t be included with the e-book if you get it on Amazon.)

Also coming in the near future will be an audio book. Last month I spent many hours in a studio recording the book, and before too long that ought to start showing up as well both on the D&B site and Amazon.

Here are some places online where I’ve found you can buy the book:

D&B Poker

Amazon

Apple Books

Books-A-Million

Barnes & Noble

Book Depository

Target

ThriftBooks

Poker & Pop Culture is also on sale right now at the D&B Poker booth at the World Series of Poker there in the halls of the Rio. I’ll be heading out there next week for a visit, and I’ll surely spend some time hanging out there at the booth, too.

As I say in the video (and have talked about here on the blog), the book provides both a history of poker and a history of how poker has been represented in American popular culture -- i.e., movies, television, music, fiction, drama, plays, literature, and so on. Thus the book not only tells you when and where and how poker has been played over the last two centuries, but also when and where and how poker has been portrayed, too, and how those portrayals have influenced opinions about poker and the game’s significance to America.

There to the left is a picture of the list of the book’s chapters. It took me a while to settle on this way of organizing the book, and in fact once I did I had this piece of paper posted by my desk -- kind of a way to keep that “bird’s eye view” before me as I wrote.

As you can see, each chapter covers a particular place where poker can be found, with that idea being applied broadly to refer to locations in history (e.g., the Old West, the Civil War, etc.), in media (movies, television, music), in society (business, politics), in time (the past, the future) and in literal locations (homes, clubs, casinos).

The book is roughly chronological, starting with poker’s origins and ending with discussions of the game in contemporary contexts. But what I’ve really tried to do is create a kind of “geography” for poker with each chapter highlighting a different place for the reader to visit where poker exists. That includes real places, made-up ones, and many combining fact and fiction.

It’s a pretty complicated story, really. One theme that emerges fairly quickly in the book is how poker occupies this very paradoxical place in America as a game both beloved and condemned. There are just as many examples in popular culture of poker being romanticized and celebrated as there are examples of it being censured and demonized.

I’m not really an unrelenting “cheerleader” for poker in the book, having chosen instead to try to be somewhat objective as I chronicle and interpret all of these examples of poker from American history and culture. That said, I think just by writing a book like this I’m obviously taking the position of someone who thinks the game is worth studying and of historical importance.

It’s definitely satisfying to have reached this point in the book-making process. Of course, there’s also that difficult sense of “letting go” while knowing I might have said more, or said things differently -- something akin to ending a poker session knowing that while you did your best, there were still hands in which you might have made different (and possibly better) decisions. (To mitigate that feeling, I hang onto the idea of a revised, expanded edition down the road.)

Thanks to those who have picked up the book already, and thanks in advance to those who plan to do so later. And to you, reader of Hard-Boiled Poker, who inspired me more than you realize to take this interest in the game and writing about it in this direction.

Poker & Pop Culture Now Available for Preorder!

As I’ve shared over Twitter and Instagram, my book Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game is now complete, and in fact has already been sent to the printer in time for publication around late May-early June.

You can preorder either the paperback or e-book right now from a number of different outlets. (There will also be an audio version of the book coming soon as well.) Ordering from the publisher, D&B Poker, is the most direct way to get it (and the place I’d advise you to go) -- here is the site for that.

Looking elsewhere, you can also preorder the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and probably other places, too, that I’ve yet to discover. No matter where you go, if you buy it now it will be delivered to your doorstep right around the first of June. If I understand correctly, you also won’t be charged until it actually ships.

I delivered the completed manuscript back in early January, but after a decent amount of editing and additional work I truly didn’t have the sense the book was “done” until a couple of weeks ago. As visitors to this blog have probably surmised, a great deal of my poker-writing energy was poured into that project -- a primary reason why I’ve been scarce over here for a while.

I’ve appeared on a few podcasts lately to talk about the book. If you’re curious, you can listen to those to get a bit of a preview:

House of Cards, Episode 574 (January 20, 2019)

Thinking Poker Podcast, Episode 284 (4 Feb. 2019)

The Chip Race, Season 8, episode 5 (11 Mar. 2019)

There is an extract available over on the D&B site that includes the beginning of the book and part of the chapter “Poker in the Movies.” It also includes the table of contents, which gives you an idea of the book's scope.

On those podcasts and in other situations, I have been describing the book as having a couple of primary purposes. One is to share the history of poker in America, starting with the very first reports of games and carrying the narrative all of the way to the present. Another important purpose is to tell the story of how poker has been presented in popular culture -- e.g., in the movies, on television, in music, in paintings, in literature and drama, in magazines and in a host of other contexts -- along the way showing how those representations of the game have importantly shaped opinions about poker.

Regarding the latter (poker in popular culture), a lot of the focus in the book is on poker popping up in “non-poker” contexts. For example, in the chapter “Poker on Television,” I do spend some time talking about “poker television” -- i.e., the WSOP, the WPT, and all of the other “poker shows” that helped increase the game’s popularity, especially during the “boom” years of the 2000s. But I spend even more space describing poker being portrayed in TV westerns, dramas, and comedies -- i.e., not actual poker but fictional poker -- and talk as well about how those portrayals of the game have encouraged certain ideas about poker’s meaning and significance.

Another way of describing the two goals of the book would be to say Poker & Pop Culture tries to share the true story of poker’s origin, development, and growth while at the same time provide a comprehensive overview of fictional portrayals of poker. It’s a lot to cover, which is one reason why the book is more than 400 pages long.

When it comes to the true history of poker, a lot has been necessarily hidden, which requires writers like me to dig deep and sometimes be forced to settle for speculative answers to questions about the game’s history. Meanwhile, the fictional portrayals of the game might be a little easier to chronicle, but the “texts” nonetheless require some interpretation in order to figure out just what they are saying about poker and its place in American history and culture.

I’m very happy with how the book has turned out, and how it kind of represents a culmination of the nearly 3,000 posts I’ve written here on Hard-Boiled Poker as well as all of the other poker-related writing I’ve done over the last 13 years. (The cover is pretty awesome, too.)

Speaking of, eight years ago today -- April 15, 2011 -- if you had asked me whether I thought I’d still be writing about poker in 2019, let alone publishing a poker book, I’m pretty sure I would have said no. As many of you well remember, that was “Black Friday,” the day playing poker online was essentially removed as an option for American players. In fact, it still isn’t an option for most of us.

I was in Lima, Peru that day, helping cover a poker tournament for PokerStars. I remember how disorienting that day was, and how a few nights later my friends and I gathered to enjoy each other’s company and contemplate the future, each of us thinking how we’d somehow reached the end of something.

As it happened, aside from no longer playing online, the changes weren’t nearly as dramatic as we thought they might be. I was able to continue going on such “poker trips” to other countries and around the United States, too, and still do today (though not as frequently). And by continuing to write about poker, the seeds were planted that eventually grew into Poker & Pop Culture.

In a later chapter the book does cover “Black Friday” and the wild “rise and fall” of online poker in the U.S., a topic that could certainly take up an entire book of its own. Indeed, many of the chapters are like that, in my opinion, capable of being expanded greatly into much longer studies.

In any case, I’m super excited the book is coming out soon and to be able to share it with everyone. Feels a little like I’ve been dealt a premium hand and am now just waiting -- a little anxious, very psyched -- to see how things develop from here.

You may be wondering whether or not it is “positive EV” for you to go ahead and purchase the book now or wait until later. I’ve actually studied this situation, and it turns out buying Poker & Pop Culture falls well within your preordering range:

#pokerpopculture

Starting a short while ago -- a little before I shared here the big news of my new book, Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game, which will be coming out via D&B Poker next summer -- I had an idea for something fun to do over Twitter as I continue to work on the book.

I’ve mentioned here how I’ve found it hard to post on the blog since most of my time and energy has necessarily been going toward the manuscript. But I also find I want to share certain “poker & pop culture”-related items I’ve encountered (or that I’ve discovered and explored before, in some cases long ago) without writing entire blog posts about them.

I’ve started sharing those items over Twitter, using the hashtag “#pokerpopculture” whenever I do. I’ve delivered about 20 of those tweets so far -- here are a few of them:

The Marx Brothers were avid poker players. In fact, Groucho, Harpo, and Chico all got their nicknames in a five-card stud poker game from a monologist named Art Fisher. Harpo would later perfect the art of cutting the cards, as demonstrated in “Horse Feathers.” #pokerpopculture pic.twitter.com/Y6B9mefqQA

— Short-Stacked Shamus (@hardboiledpoker) March 21, 2018

“The Odd Couple” (1968): Felix moves in with Oscar and the weekly poker game suddenly becomes a lot cleaner.
“What’s that smell... disinfectant?”
“It’s the cards. He washed the cards!” #pokerpopculture pic.twitter.com/2uj9MdAfdS

— Short-Stacked Shamus (@hardboiledpoker) March 29, 2018

Bugs Bunny heads-up against Colonel Shuffle, the "rip-roaringest, gol-dingenest, sharp-shootinest, poker-playingest riverboat gambler on the Mississippi," in “Mississippi Hare” (1949). #pokerpopculture pic.twitter.com/oKcf9Hlt3U

— Short-Stacked Shamus (@hardboiledpoker) April 21, 2018

Game theory pioneer Oskar Morgenstern’s Feb. 5, 1961 NYT column “The Cold War Is Cold Poker” likened US-USSR diplomacy (or brinkmanship) to a poker game. “In poker there are always some winners and some losers; in power politics, both sides may lose. Everything.” #pokerpopculture pic.twitter.com/8b37angWk6

— Short-Stacked Shamus (@hardboiledpoker) May 17, 2018

From 1871, “The Saturday Evening Post” reports that among several “masculine accomplishments” demonstrated by women’s rights activists, “Susan B. Anthony plays a rattling game of draw-poker.” #pokerpopculture pic.twitter.com/wfNflDqw9Q

— Short-Stacked Shamus (@hardboiledpoker) June 13, 2018

As you can tell, the connecting thread here between the tweets are the way all highlight mentions of poker in the “mainstream” that help highlight connections between the game and American history and culture, generally speaking. That’s a primary thread of my book as well, although there the items are all presented in their appropriate contexts -- hopefully in ways that are both informative and entertaining.

Anyhow, you can follow me @hardboiledpoker and when you do click on #pokerpopculture for more.

For the Book

When I last checked in I mentioned a new book in the works, one focusing on poker and popular culture that will be bringing together a lot of the poker-related writing I’ve done over the last decade-plus both here on the blog and via other outlets.

As I’ve mentioned, the book will be called Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game. While it discusses the history of the game it will primarily focus on cultural representations of poker -- i.e., “mainstream” depictions of the game that also tell the story of poker’s significance and attitudes toward the game.

As I continue to work on the book I’ve come to realize every time I think about posting something here on the blog, I’m better served not doing so and instead saving it “for the book.” Truth be told, it isn’t true that everything I might write about here belongs in the book, but I’m still at an early enough stage where I’m more inclined to include more than exclude when it comes to envisioning Poker & Pop Culture.

It’s great fun, let me tell you, thinking about what I want to include and still sitting here at a point where most of the different possible versions of the book still happily co-exist in my jingle-brain.

That said, I know that way of thinking about the book isn’t going to last much longer, as the book will, in the end, be of reasonable length. I remember interviewing James McManus back in 2009 shortly after he’d published Cowboys Full and him telling me how his original draft had been around 1,000 pages. I’m quickly realizing how if I included everything I could end up with something similarly unwieldy, and so am already in the process of trimming back as I expand.

I guess I’m also saving “for the book” my finite supply of energy for writing about poker, which I’m also continuing to do elsewhere as part of my regular workload. I additionally keep teaching my poker-related American Studies courses every semester at UNC-Charlotte, which also takes away from the time I might have spent on here scribbling over here.

I’ll keep checking in here, though, when I can, and promise once the manuscript has been submitted to do so more often, particularly as we get nearer to publication.

Book Announcement: Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game Coming 2019

I have some fun news to share, and for some reason April 1 felt like a good day to share it. This one is a long time coming, something I’ve hinted at here on the blog a few times before.

The “poker & pop culture” book is happening. No foolin’! (And no shinola.)

The book will be published by D&B Poker. After many years of publishing strategy books, D&B Poker has widened its scope a bit to include other poker-related titles like Tricia Cardner and Jonathan Little’s books on psychology and poker, as well as autobiographies by Mike Sexton and Phil Hellmuth.

You’ve probably heard as well about Lance Bradley’s book due to appear this summer titled The Pursuit of Poker Success: Learn From 50 of the World’s Best Poker Players that features Bradley interviewing many of the game’s best known and most successful players. You can preorder Lance's book now either via D&B Poker or Amazon.

My book will be titled Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game. Ordered somewhat chronologically as a history of the game, the book primarily will focus on poker’s prominence in American popular culture or the “mainstream.” In other words, I’ll be examining the game as it has been discussed and portrayed over the last two centuries-plus not just at the tables, but in newspapers, magazines, letters, memoirs, paintings, fiction, drama, radio shows, music, film, television, and elsewhere.

The book will additionally highlight poker being frequently evoked in politics, business, economics, warfare and diplomacy, business, economics, sports, and other “non-poker” contexts, with all of those references furthering the argument for poker’s importance to U.S. history and culture.

Such references to poker popping up day-to-day American life also tend to foreground links between certain ideals and values considered “American” -- things like individual liberty, self-reliance, the frontier spirit, egalitarianism, the “pursuit of happiness,” the ideologies of capitalism, and so on -- and so that obviously will be part of the story, too.

The idea of doing some sort of poker book probably began for me way back during the early days of the blog (begun almost 12 years ago), at some point not long after I picked up the habit of writing about poker on a regular basis both here and then soon after for a variety of different sites and publications.

For a few years that was mostly just an idle thought encouraged by the fast-growing number of Hard-Boiled Poker posts. However, once I developed and began teaching my “Poker and American Film and Culture” class in 2011, the idea began to take on a more concrete shape as I envisioned creating a book that might serve as a kind of textbook for the course.

Then in 2014 things got even more specific when with the help of an agent I began shopping book proposals and developing blurbs, detailed outlines and annotated tables of contents, sample chapters, and the like.

That process evolved into a year-and-a-half long mini-adventure that was interesting for me though less so for others, I imagine, so I’ll gloss over the details. Instead I’ll just skip ahead to the happy ending of D&B Poker entering the picture. I’ll be spending most of this year writing and rewriting as I get the manuscript together, with the 2019 World Series of Poker being the current target for the book to hit the stands.

I’ve written a book-length disseration and two novels before (Same Difference and Obsessica), and so I have had some experience planning and completing long-term writing projects. As in poker, patience is a big part of seeing such things through and having something to show for it in the end.

But this will be something different, a new and different kind of writing challenge. And I expect it ultimately to be a lot of fun for your humble scribbler and (hopefully) for some of you, too.

I’ll keep you updated on the project over here as well as on Twitter. Meanwhile big thanks to everyone who has read posts here and other articles of mine, and whose support and feedback encouraged me to keep writing. I know already the list of people I’m going to want to mention in the Foreword will be a long one.

Image: A Friend in Need (1903) by Cassius M. Coolidge, public domain.