<div dir="ltr"><div>All, <br></div><div>Please find attached and below Jeremy Larance's review of <i>Poker and Popular Cuture</i>.</div><div>Thanks</div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><i><span lang="EN">Poker
& Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Cards Game</span></i><span lang="EN"> by Martin Harris<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Reviewed by Jeremy Larance, West Liberty
University<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">“Poker? Sure, we know poker. But how well do
we know poker, really?”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">--Martin Harris, <i>Poker & Popular Culture </i>(2019)<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Like baseball, jazz, and comic-book
superheroes, poker is an American-born institution of popular culture. Like
baseball, the popularity of poker spread across the country when soldiers
returning from the Civil War carried with them the rules of a new game of
uncertain origins. Like jazz, the game was fine-tuned in the late-nineteenth
century along the shores of the Mississippi River, in and around the ports of
New Orleans. And, like comic-book superheroes, by the mid-twentieth century,
poker players (both real and imagined) were quickly becoming icons of American
masculinity. <span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">In his new book, <i>Poker & Pop Culture</i>, Martin Harris laments that even though
poker “is so deeply embedded in American culture, its profound significance and
even influence on the country’s history has...been taken for granted”
(15).There have been countless surveys and studies written about popular
symbols of American culture, but until now there has never been a comprehensive
examination of poker from a pop-culture perspective. James McManus’s <i>Cowboys Full: The Story of Poke</i>r (2009)
is easily the most exhaustive history of poker, but in his blurb for <i>Poker & Pop Culture</i>, McManus himself
acknowledges the importance of Harris’s contribution to the field, calling the
book “a lively, well researched, highly readable account of the game’s hold on
the popular imagination...with 1,001 telling details. A+ Americana, and then
some.”<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Harris is a journalist and a college English
instructor, so it should come as no surprise that <i>Poker & Pop Culture</i> is both readable and scholarly. Casual
readers and academics alike will find <i>Poker
& Pop Culture</i> to be an engaging survey of poker in what Harris
describes as a “host of contexts as an incredibly complex and versatile emblem
for all sorts of ideas and messages, all of which might be said in one way or
another to reflect the diversity and richness of the Amerixcan experience”
(371). <span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">One need only view the book’s table of
contents to recognize its breadth:<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker on the Mississippi<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the Old West<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the Civil War<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in Clubs<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker on the Bookshelf<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the Home<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the White House<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker During Wartime<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the Board Room<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in Folklore<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in Casinos<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker on the Newstand<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the Movies<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in Literature<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker on the Radio<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in Music<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker on Television<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker on the Computer<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker Under Siege<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Poker in the Future<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Although references to other chapters are
sometimes used to avoid redundancies, each chapter is essentially a
stand-alone, thematic essay. Readers could easily jump from one chapter to
another with relative ease, but the chapters work best when taken as a whole.
Together, they tell the story of poker in a series of vignettes, in which poker
is like a dynamic character constantly evolving in response to changing
cultures and contexts. Early chapters focus on tales and theories about poker’s
roots, and general readers not familiar with poker’s complicated history will
find these chapters informative and accessible, but even the most passionate poker
aficionados will likely benefit from Harris’s exceptional research and insight,
supplementing the work of poker historians and theorists before him. <span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Not surprisingly, the most interesting and
distinctive chapters focus on poker in popular mediums like folklore, movies,
radio dramas, short fiction, songs, television shows, and video games. In a
wonderful display of kisch criticism, for example, Harris dissects of the
history and influence of Cassius Marcellus Coolridge’s infamous “Dogs Playing
Poker” paintings:<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Everyone knows them,
those absurd gatherings of different breeds of dogs smoking cigars, drinking
whisky and beer, and playing poker as though they were human. You don’t even
have to play poker to be familiar with the card-playing canines, regarded by
some as the epitome of kitsch of lowbrow culture, by others as an effective,
insightful commentary on the middle and upper classes. The images may well rank
among the most iconic depictions of poker ever produced by mainstream popular
culture. (136-37)<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Though <i>perhaps</i>
not as “highbrow” as Georges de La Tour’s <i>Cheat
with the Ace of Clubs</i> (ca. 1626-29) or <i>Cheat
with the Ace of Diamonds</i> (1635), the eighteen “Dogs Playing Poker”
paintings (1894-1910), according to Harris, reflect and comment upon the male-dominated
culture of turn-of-the-century America, a theme he returns to many times
throughout <i>Poker & Pop Culture</i>.
In his analysis of the 1951 film-adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i>, for example,
Harris writes, “The story conspicuously uses poker to emphasize the stark,
conflict-causing differences that can sometimes exist between men and women”
(258). Contrast that dramatic use of poker to how the game is used as a central
staging device in Neil Simon’s play and film, <i>The Odd Couple</i> (1965 and 1968 respectively), and one can begin to
see how versatile and significant “iconic depictions” of poker can be.<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Readers interested in poker will be hard
pressed to find any resource as comprehensive as <i>Poker & Pop Culture</i>. If anything, Harris’s obvious desire to
make his book an “easy” read means that he does not venture too far into the
realm of pop-culture theory. Still, Harris’s fourteen-page bibliography and
twenty-three pages of endnotes should satisfy any scholar<span> </span>looking for more information and resources
about poker in popular culture. <span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Commenting on the surge of poker-related books
published in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Harris notes that, “Taken
together, the books provide ready evidence of the game’s growing popularity as
well as its constant evolution and adaptability” (111). The same can certainly
be said about <i>Poker & Pop Culture</i>,
a much-welcomed and much-needed survey of “America’s favorite card game.”<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span lang="EN">Harris, Martin. <i>Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Cards
Game</i>. D & B Publishing, 2019.<span></span></span></p>
</div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>