Perseus Academic: The Odds by Chad Millman

One gambler is a manic former cokehead with an Ivy League degree. The second is a college dropout trying to make a living at the only thing he enjoyed at school — gambling. The third, one of Vegas's most respected bookmakers, is perilously close to burning out. The Odds follows the lives of these three professional gamblers through a college basketball season in a one-of-a-kind city struggling to reconcile its lawless past with its family-friendly makeover. With a wiseguy attitude and a faultless eye and ear for the sights and sounds of Vegas and its denizens, Chad Millman has created a portrait that the Wall Street Journal called fascinating… often screamingly funny. The Las Vegas Review-Journal had just one word for the book: Superb.

Chad Millman is a former Sports Illustrated reporter, a CNNSI correspondent, and associate editor at ESPN The Magazine. He has covered the NCAA basketball tournament, the Boston College football gambling scandal, the 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics, and six Super Bowls. He lives in New York City.