Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

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About Casino: Love And Honor In Las Vegas

Product Description Love, greed and betrayal in the Las Vegas mob. From Nicholas Pileggi, author of the bestselling "Wiseguy" -- the #1 bestseller that later became the hit movie "Goodfellas" -- comes this brilliantly told tale of love, marriage, adultery, murder and revenge Mafia-style, the true story of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold over the multi-billion-dollar casino gambling industry of Las Vegas. No one knew more about casinos than Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, with his best friend and partner Anthony Spilotro virtually "ran" Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement -- Lefty provided the smarts and obsessive attention to detail, while Tony made sure the bosses stayed happy with their weekly suitcases filled with millions of dollars in skimmed cash. It was so sweet it should have lasted forever, but Lefty's obsession with running the town -- and Tony's obsession with Lefty's beautiful showgirl wife Geri -- eventually led to the betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest debacles in the mob's history. A real-life story of love and betrayal set in America's favorite playground, "Casino" is a Mafia tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, as well as the inside account of just how the mob lost control of the neon money-making machine it created. From Library Journal The author of Wiseguy (LJ 2/1/86) (filmed as Goodfellas) serves up another colorful tale of Mafia misdeeds. Pileggi's primary source is gambler Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal (who luckily survived a car bomb), and the focus is on the mob takeovers of the Stardust and Tropicana casinos, using Teamster pension funds, in the 1970s. Mafia infighting between the Chicago and Kansas City factions, coupled with court convictions, effectively halted organized crime's Las Vegas gold mine in the 1980s. Published to coincide with the release of the Martin Scorsese film, starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci, this episodic, lively book is likely to be a hit movie. Recommended for popular collections. --Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Amazon.com Review The author of the best-selling gives us this true and brilliantly-told story of love, marriage, adultery, murder, revenge, and how it led to the Mafia's finally losing its stranglehold on the Las Vegas casinos. From Publishers Weekly The basis for the Martin Scorsese movie of the same name, Pileggi's true-crime account charts the rise and fall of a pair of Vegas hoods. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Nicholas Pileggi lives in New York City. From Booklist Pileggi, author of the best-selling Wiseguys (1986), which was filmed by Martin Scorsese as Goodfellas, unravels another fascinating true-crime Mob story. Through interviews with Mafia big shots from all over the country, Pileggi tells the extraordinary tale of how a team of Chicago mobsters headed west to conquer Vegas. Leading the pack was Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who learned his bookmaking trade early, ditching school to go to the track. His interest in sports of all kinds blossomed as he realized that the more he knew about a sport and its players, the more accurate his numbers. Local bookies soon saw the value in Lefty's knowledge, and eventually he landed in Vegas. Like Henry Hill in Wiseguys, Lefty tells Pileggi the story of his career in no-holds-barred fashion, exposing the rampant, multileveled corruption in extensive detail--the skimming, the bribing of authorities, the inside dealing. He also explains what brought the Mob's Vegas house down--his personal squabble with former best friend Tony "the Art" Spilotro, who supplied the muscle behind Lefty's brains. With nonfiction page-turners like the kind Pileggi writes, who needs crime fiction? Expect heavy demand with the simultaneous release of Casino the book and the movie, again directed by Scorsese and starring