Please welcome ben mezrich. Hello everybody, thank you for coming out on a friday night. Its getting getting a little chilly but its still nice out and i appreciate everyone coming on a friday night. I will get to once upon a time in russia in just a few minutes but i know whenever i go see a band i always hate it when they never play the hits. I want to do a little bit of the hits first and how i got to the story. I never set out to be a nonfiction writer or a journalist. As a kid i always hated nonfiction and i didnt read much of it. I was obsessed with television and bad tv like say by the bell m3s company and all of that crap. My parents, fearing the worst, made a rule at home that we had to read two books a week before we were allowed to watch tv. So at a very young age i became a speed reader so i could watch tv. I watched everything. By the time i graduated from college i knew i wanted to be a writer. I wrote and i wrote and i wrote nine novels in a year. I dont recommend that f
A lot of selfies. Including one with the shows star, steve bushemi. I to this take think those were only flashes. None of those cameras had any film in them. When you walked the red carpet . Yes. And to get that many people to cooperate, to pretend they were not pretending. Well, they werent, but we did get introduced and they were like because what happened is you were so late because you didnt know where the bridge was, you were so late that all the stars arrived and they all go in last. So we walked through with them. So they were confused. They were like, theres a lot of customers. They thought we might be part of the andrew it served you well in that case. It did. Otherwise we would have been welcome but then you left and i walked the whole premier alone. He was this is what a the mandate. It wasnt a mandate, but theres wing men and theres buddies and i was there. I was there for you. You were there for ten minutes, andrew, and then he left and i sat for a hour at boardwalk empire
Booktv a preview of his forthcoming book, mr. President. George washington and the making of the nations highest office. Then at 8 45 p. M. Eastern, the First Amendment cases the author has participated in or written about over the years. He also discusses his fight for freedom. And then after words with an author and guest interviewer. She is the author of women in the club, gender and policymaking in the senate. We wrap up tonights program at 11 00 p. M. Eastern with a discussion on how economic balance has brought down powerful nations. Glenn hubbard and the Hudson Institute talk about the possibility of the same thing happening to the united states. Visit booktv. Org for more on this television schedule. Now its time for more booktv. The author is the daughter of two Holocaust Survivors. Sonia taitz was featured at the authors wrote literature fest. I am so honored to be here with this great audience and the author sonia taitz, who has written a very haunting book called the watchm
Revenue of 1 million per day. In the eventual scrutiny received from the department of justice which shut it down in 2011. This program is about 40 minutes. Good afternoon, thank you all for joining us and thank you all watching on booktv on cspan2, you are joining billions around the world. When they asked me to come here and interview ben mezrich had jumped at the chance. He is one of my favorite people in the literary world. A lot of you know the film based on his books as well as his books, the accidental billionaires became the social network, bringing down the house became 21 and you title the book sex on the moon because you knew they would never change that title for a film. The book we are talking about who dealt their way to a billiondollar online poker empireand how it all came crashing down. About how a few Enterprising Program players created an empire sort of. I want to begin by drawing your attention to for my many the greatest author jacket photo since hemingway, right
Hy was already, as a writer came to respect him as a man and as a craftsman how he went about making extremely infectiously readable pieces of work, it is a great honor to be here. I will begin by asking for those who havent read your book can you give us an overview, and why this story drew you in. This is the story of a group of Fraternity Brothers from the university of montana, regular kids, most of them were very poor, was so poor he told a cow to buy his first car, they were montana kids, they sold poker in the basement of a bar and one got the idea is that putting poker on line and make a lot of money and online poker hadnt started yet. Only one other company back in 1999 so they built one of the first and Biggest Online poker sides. The move most of the fraternity to costar rico which was wallace while west craziness and kind of built this over a few years to a Million Dollar did business. And many billions of dollars. And and online poker, and online poker would be considered