The Education of a Poker Player

"In writing about poker Jim McManus has managed to write about everything, and it's glorious."—David Sedaris

New York Times-bestselling author James McManus offers up a collection of seven stories narrated by Vincent Killeen, an Irish Catholic altar boy, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Persuaded at age eight by his grandmother that entering the priesthood will guarantee salvation for every member of his family, Vince eagerly commits to attending a Jesuit seminary for high school. As the meaning of a vow of celibacy becomes clearer to him, however, and he is exposed to the irresistible temptations of poker and girls, life as a seminarian begins to seem less appealing. These autobiographical stories are enlightening and evocative, providing keen, often humorous insight into Catholicism, faith, celibacy and its opposite, as well as America's—and increasingly the world's—favorite card game.

James McManus has been called "poker's Shakespeare." He is the New York Times-bestselling author of Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, among others. He has been the poker columnist for the New York Times and currently writes the history column for CardPlayer. His work has also appeared in Harper's, The Believer, Paris Review, Esquire, and in Best American anthologies for poetry, sports writing, science and nature, and magazine writing. He has spoken about poker at Yale, Harvard, Google, Goldman Sachs, and on numerous media outlets, and is the recipient of the Peter Lisagor Award for Sports Journalism and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, among other awards. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.