24/7: Living It up and Doubling Down

From seedy strip clubs to sprawling suburbs, from the sumptuous Bellagio to the Liberace Museum, Martinez meets a host of colorful characters...gathering tricks of the trade from blackjack dealers and fellow bleary-eyed gamblers, attending Easter Sunday mass on the Strip, befriending a family man who raised six kids while losing eight million dollars as a sports gambler. An exhilarating joyride of a read, 24/7 is a breathless tour of America's Sin City...as seen through the eyes of a man making $1.65 million in wagers in a single month. Guess how much he took home?

In the spring of 1998, mild-mannered, Ivy League-educated Andrés Martinez took $50,000—most of the advance his publisher was paying for this book—and headed to Las Vegas for thirty days, ten casinos, and a wild ride through the belly of a neon beast. The result: this brilliant, often hilarious chronicle of flesh, flash, and gambling in a city where everyone dreams of hitting the jackpot—and once in a while, someone actually does.

From seedy strip clubs to sprawling suburbs, from the sumptuous Bellagio to the Liberace Museum, Martinez meets a host of colorful characters...gathering tricks of the trade from blackjack dealers and fellow bleary-eyed gamblers, attending Easter Sunday mass on the Strip, befriending a family man who raised six kids while losing eight million dollars as a sports gambler. An exhilarating joyride of a read, 24/7 is a breathless tour of America's Sin City...as seen through the eyes of a man making $1.65 million in wagers in a single month. Guess how much he took home?

Onions.A.V. Club - Scott Tobias

Adding to a recent spate of books on the new, corporatized, family-friendly Las Vegas, former Wall Street Journal reporter Andrés Martinez's 24/7 boasts an irresistible hook: Withdrawing his entire $50,000 publishing advance from the bank, Martinez spent a full month on the Strip, boldly sampling the high-stakes tables at every big-name casino in the city. Betting at a rate as high as $18,000 per hour on blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and war--yes, the inane kids' game in which the highest card wins--he offers the vicarious thrill of watching a normally sane, level-headed guy lead a double life as a freewheeling high roller. With a premise like this one in place, you'd expect either a cynic's jaded perspective on Sin City vulgarity or the swift descent of a newly addicted gambler, but Martinez proves a cheerful, open-minded tour guide.

Bookended by a stay at the Egyptian-themed Luxor (which features a pyramid atrium large enough to hold nine stacked 747s) and the opening weekend of the $1.6 billion Bellagio, 24/7 broadens its scope beyond the casinos to cover the fringes of America's fastest-growing major city. Martinez is particularly interested in long-time residents who witnessed Vegas' awkward transition from mob control to an insidiously glossy Disneyland at the mercy of Wall Street stockholders. For "Peggy," an old-time "classy dame" who spent the weekends of her youth on the arms of monied businessmen, and Dick Carson, a self-described family man who made his millions as a book, the lesson is always the same: In Vegas, everyone eventually loses. After a hot streak that brings his "nest egg" (a wry allusion to Albert Brooks' Lost In America) to dizzying heights, Martinez learns first-hand the compulsive, irrational panic that grips the suddenly unlucky. By the end, his tidy metaphor of the city as "a mirror... reflecting our basest urges" twists to amusing funhouse distortions.

Before setting off to Vegas with his wad of traveler's checks, Andrés Martinez, a native of Mexico, had once been a sober journalist and attorney. He studied history at Yale University, obtained a master's degree from Stanford, and then earned a law degree from Columbia, where he made Law Review. After a judicial clerkship and a brief stint at a law firm, Martinez joined the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has also been a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He lives in New York City with his wife, Kathy, and their cat, Trotsky. He is currently writing a novel.