Article: BOOKMARKS Shuffling through books by Chicagoans

It was a French parlor game with roots in China and the Middle East, but it took American ingenuity and spirit to turn it into a national craze.

We're talking about poker, of course. And the storyteller of this game of cheaters and shysters, of presidents and generals, of businessmen and gamblers is an elegant Chicagoan whose memoir about playing poker in a World Series championship, "Positively Fifth Street," became a bestseller in 2003.

I was introduced to James McManus at a party in Chicago. After some opening chit-chat, I asked him about his next book, "Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker."

Do you know, he said, that men in the Stone Age played a game of chance -- well, gambled -- with ...

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