Customer Reviews

Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Loved the book, understand why the author has such a big ego- He lived in an awsome time and was at the top. Historic details filled in alot of gaps to my understanding of the mid 1800's. learned many things about the lives of people living in the Steamboat Era and was grandly entertained. laughed outloud.

Highly entertaining stories about gambling
in the mid 1800's on the Mississippi River.
The life of George Devol as gambler,fighter
& con artist & his insights into the men &
their character is also an insight into the
man himself. He was a master at
manipulating mens greed & vanity.The
accounts of his bare knuckle fights were
truly amazing

By total chance this title caught my eye in the UNLV library when I was walking by. I ended up buying it on Amazon when I got back home. Very glad I did (although I hear the Free Kindle version is just as good). This is not so much a book narrative his life as it is a collection of anecdotes and stories from that life, broken up in one to two page sections. What a life. Duval ran away from home as a young boy and worked on a ship. There he learned how to deal cards and also, how to cheat. The thing they say about cons, at least 19th and early 20th century cons, (read The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man if interested) is they never worked on an honest mark. Almost all of them depended on presenting low but illegal hanging fruit in front of a greedy man and then parting him from his money while he grabbed at it. One of Duval's most successful was to conspicuously mark a card in his deck and deal until he knew the victim had spotted the pattern. He'd wait until the man placed a huge bet, certain to win with his inside knowledge, and then deal him a losing hand. Duval seems to have been the embodiment of Roosevelt's expression about walking softly but carrying a big stick. He'd always give some of the winnings back if it was all the loser had in the world, or if he'd bet his wife's jewelry and lost, Duval would send it back to her stateroom later that night. But if they wouldn't take their turn of the cards with some dignity he had no problem fighting or draw his pistol (which he called Betsy Jane but never used). In fact, his favorite weapon was his head, and the book must detail 20 instances where he wins a fight with a solid headbutt. There is a lot of great history in here since he experienced the South both pre, during and post-Civil war (was actually imprisoned by the occupying Union forces for nearly a year). My only criticism is that after about 150 pages the stories all seem to blur together. You can only hear about an overconfident guy falling for a trick and then fighting about the money he lost so many times. But if you read it sporadically or non-linearly it's an excellent book to have.

There's nothing wrong with the content of this book, originally written over a century ago.
But the paperback version being sold here on Amazon is NOT the version shown in the "Look Inside the Book" feature associated with the listing. The "Look Inside" feature shows the typeset format which matches the layout as originally printed, complete with some illustrations.

But that's NOT what you get when you buy this paperback edition -- the paperback is merely the plain-text version you can find online for free. It has NONE of the formatting or layout you'd expect to see in a printed book. Instead, it looks like a slap-dash term paper typed on a keyboard, and then printed at the lowest quality setting on an inkjet printer with type so light that it's just plain hard to read. It is absolutely NOT a "high quality paperback edition" as claimed in the Editorial Review/product description.

The "Look Inside" feature should be either corrected or removed, since it does NOT accurately represent what you'll get if you buy a copy. As it stands, it's completely misleading. Had I known what the book actually looked like, I would never have purchased this poorly-produced edition of what appears to be an interesting memoir of a colorful period in American history. In fact, I am SO dissatisfied with this book that I may return it. Save yourself $9.99 and either read it online or print out the online file you can find simply by Googling the book's title.