21: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

In the "Greed Is Good" 1980s, a group of MIT geniuses decided to break the bank at Las Vegas. Utilizing their own mathematical wizardry and large doses of moxie, these six co-conspirators legally beat Vegas' largest casinos out of more than $3 million in less than two years. Harvard University graduate/thriller author Ben Mezrich has recomposed their story, an arresting hybrid of Liar's Poker, The Cuckoo's Egg, and Ocean's Eleven. Taut action and close calls.

Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. Since then, he has published six novels with a combined printing of more than a million copies in nine languages (Threshold, Reaper, Fertile Ground, Skin, and under Holden Scott, Skeptic and The Carrier. His second novel, Reaper, was turned into TBS's premiere movie, Fatal Error, starring Antonio Sabato, Jr., and Robert Wagner. Bringing Down the House is his seventh book and his first foray into nonfiction.