There's nothing like a little variety for those who enjoy a wide spectrum of subjects when it comes to gambling and Las Vegas, and the two recent arrivals at Gambler's Book Shop provide plenty of range. The first is David Porter's Fixed: How Goodfellas Bought College Basketball (256 pages,hardbound, $24.95) and Mike Weatherford's Cult Vegas (247 pages, paperbound, $19.95).

Fixed concentrates on the Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal of the 1978-79 season-an event that rears its ugly head very ten years or so. A truly a dark side of the sports world, the incident involved greed, corruption and ambition, while gambling lurked in every corner. Illustrated and indexed, this just-released work profiles the players involved and allegedly involved in the fixes. It covers how they met, their hopes and ambitions, their meetings with bookies, how the plot was hatched, and the role of men like Richard Perry, with Las Vegas ties, who Porter says had "an uncanny habit of being at the wrong place at the wrong time." In 1974, Perry was one of only two people convicted (out of twenty-eight who were indicted) on charges of fixing horse races at Yonkers Raceway, for which he served six months UNLV hoops program through various indiscretions. Perry was also considered a handicapping genius "who always seemed to have an angle on whatever big games were going on around the country."

Porter traces the recent history of basketball in the Boston area: the coaches; the growth of the sport on television; how players were recruited, and how the fix was cultivated.

This is the story of three players in the spotlight and how they were involved in fixed games. The names were Rick Kuhn, Jim Sweeney and Ernie Cobb. All three suffered destruction of careers and future, though it's never been determined with finality that Cobb was involved in any illegal activity. It's also the story of the role of the Mob including informant Henry Hill and others, about double crosses, about lies, about the trial(s) and verdicts.

The book is packed with names; it identifies the games, the spreads, the outcomes-and what might have been.

Cult Vegas is about the Las Vegas of yesteryear for the most part-from the 1950s to the 1990s. Packed with photos, nostalgia, anecdotes, colorful bits of pieces of the Vegas That Once Was, it's part history, part entertainment, never boring.

Those who enjoyed the Rat Pack era; the lounge acts that packed 'em in like Louis Prima; The Treniers; Cook E. Jarr; the comedians like Joe E. Lewis; Buddy Hackett; Shecky Greene; Don Rickles; Redd Foxx will find a goldmine of anecdotes and background on each. (Johnny Carson made it big in Las Vegas. Initially Elvis Presley flopped. Years later he'd return and turn the city upside down as a major performer.)

Then there were the movies they made in or about Las Vegas, including the original classic Ocean's Eleven with Sinatra and pals. There were plenty of bombs and turkeys, and a variety of cult classics made about the city as well, and Weatherford hardly misses a beat with details on how and why they were made.

The Die is Cast!!

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