Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

by Nicholas Pileggi

Overview

CASINO

From Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy —the #1 bestseller that became Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award–winning film GoodFellas—comes the brilliantly told true story of love, marriage, adultery, murder, and revenge, Mafia-style . . . the shattering inside account of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold over the neon money-making machine it created: the multibillion-dollar casino gambling industry of Las Vegas.

CASINO

No one knew more about casinos than Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, along 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, while Tony kept the bosses happy with their weekly suitcases filled with millions in skimmed cash. 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 mob history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451635676
Publisher:	Pocket Books
Publication date:	06/28/2011
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	67,729
Product dimensions:	7.34(w) x 4.28(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Pileggi is the bestselling author of Wiseguy, Casino, and Blye: Private Eye. He lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

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. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/95.]-Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis

Library Journal

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 Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone.

Mary Frances Wilkens