After Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods, Harper Collins continue its expriment. It has released the full text of Double or Nothing. You can read it for free online. It’s the story of how two friends risked it all to buy one of Las Vegas’ legendary casino.

“If Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had come of age at the end of the 20^th century looking for an all-American adventure, they probably would’ve headed for Vegas.

They’d have been hard-pressed to go on a wilder ride than the one taken by Tom Breitling and Tim Poster to the top of the famed Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino.

Call them the Odds Couple.

Breitling is the kid who lives next door if you grow up in Burnsville, Minnesota. He never saw a hundred dollar bill or The Godfather until he went to college.

Poster comes from a family of oddsmakers who reach for the Doritos on football Sundays and scream for the point spread. He was whistling Sinatra and booking games at his Las Vegas high school.

Their unlikely friendship began in college over an $8 veal parmigiana sandwich that led to a partnership in a hotel reservation business. Starting with a desk, a chair, a pillow, and a telephone, Tim and Tom grew a company that they sold during the dot.com boom for $105 million. This allows Tim to pursue his childhood dream of owning a casino and bringing back the glory days of Vegas.”

Link to the online book

via boingboing 

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In his book McMafia, Misha Glenny introduces you to the less familiar aspects of crime, from Kazakhstan’s caviar mafia to the flourishing marijuana trade in British Columbia.

The author suggest something, that most of us already knew - in BC, cannabis provides more jobs than logging, mining, oil and gas combined.

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Hillary Carlip author of the Queen of the oddball just got her last book published. In her book A la Cart: The Secret Lives of Grocery Shoppers she picks up lost grocery lists and imagine the life of thier respective owners. Odd but funny.

“Ever since she was a teenager, performance artist and author Carlip (Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan) has been collecting strangers’ lost shopping lists and imaging the lives and people behind them. […] Fans of Sloane Tanen’s Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same should flock to this hilarious, delightful, unique achievement. (Mar.)“[Amazon]

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Here is the new edition of Danny Lyon book The Bikeriders, published first in the mid 196os, just before Easy Rider roared its way into American consciousness. Danny Lyon is a self-taught American photographer and filmmaker. He is also credited as an accomplished writer to accompany his photographs.

Technorati Tags: bikers, arts, photography

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Harper Collins has put the great Neil Gaiman’s novel American Godsonline for free reading as an experiment to see free digital copies sell more print books.

Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming — a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path.

One of the most talked-about books of the new millennium, American Gods is a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an American landscape at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. It is, quite simply, a contemporary masterpiece.

Link

Technorati Tags: Books

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The Lucifer Effect is a new book authored by Philip G. Zimbardo that summarizes more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a “perfect storm” which leads good people to engage in evil actions. Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is known for his Stanford prison experiment and his authorship of introductory psychology textbooks for college students.

In the The Lucifer Effect, the very lively 75 years old psychologist explains how Good People Turn Evil by providing, among other things a detailed chronology of the transformations in character that took place during the famous Stanford prison experiment.

« The Lucifer Effect raises a fundamental question about the nature of human nature: How is it possible for ordinary, average, even good people to become perpetrators of evil? In trying to understand unusual, weird or aberrant behavior, we often err in focusing exclusively on the inner determinants of genes, personality and character, as we also tend to ignore what may be the critical catalyst for behavior change in the external Situation or in the System that creates and maintains such situations. »

7 Social Processes That Grease the Slippery Slope of Evil. (according to Zimbardo)

1. Mindlessly Taking the First Small Step.
2. Dehumanizing of Others.
3. De- individuation of Personal Responsibility.
4. Blind Obedience to Authority.
5. Uncritical Conformity to Group Norms.
6. Passive Tolerance of Evil Through Inaction, or Indifference.

Technorati Tags: The Lucifer Effect, Stanford prison experiments

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