Gang violence is a continual problem in urban neighborhoods around the world. But most of our understanding of the violence and its causes comes through the lens of policing and crime control, with little attention to the role played by the structure, organization, and social makeup of a gang. The Street Casino offers new insight on that front, drawing on an extensive ethnographic study of gang members and community residents in South London. Simon Harding uses this new data to propose a new theoretical perspective on survival in violent street gangs, a constantly fluctuating life built on the accrual of "street capital."

This cautionary tale explains how the murky and complex world of mortgage finance caused a global market meltdown—and offers new insights on how to create a stronger world of banking and mortgage finance. Years after the economic crisis of the late 2000s, Americans still want to know what went wrong—and why. Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance provides an accurate and understandable explanation, compiling and interpreting mountains of evidence to provide clear analysis and insight into the crisis that traumatized people and institutions around the globe. The book provides a thorough, in-depth examination of the multiple contributing factors. The author goes back as far as 15 years before the crisis to show how the well-intentioned idea of providing home ownership prompted a government led effort to steadily weaken credit standards. He assigns partial blame on regulators that were unaware of growing levels of risk, ignored mounting evidence of a housing bubble, and failed to grasp the unintended consequences of certain regulations. The origins of the overload of subprime collateralized debt obligations that led to concentrated risks on the balance sheets of many large banks around the world are also explained.

In this lively and probing book, award-winning author Pete Earley traces the extraordinary evolution of Las Vegas -- from the gaudy Mecca of the Rat Pack era to one of the country's top family vacation spots. He revisits the city's checkered history of moguls, mobsters, and entertainers, reveals the real stories of well-known power brokers like Steve Wynn and legends like Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel, and offers a fascinating portrait of the life, death, and fantastic rebirth of the Las Vegas Strip. Earley also documents the gripping tale of the entrepreneurs behind the rise and fall and rise again of one of the largest gaming corporations in the nation, Circus Circus -- to which he was given unique access. In his trademark you-are-there style, he takes us behind the scenes to meet the blackjack dealers and hookers, the heavy hitters and bit players, the security officers, cabbies, and showgirls who are caught up in the mercurial pace that pulses at the heart of this astounding city.

In casino gambling there's a house advantage built into every game. John Grochowski shows you how to beat that advantage and increase your winning odds in three of the most popular casino games (blackjack, video poker, and roulette).

In 1956, two Bell Labs scientists discovered the scientific formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory—the basis of computers and the Internet—to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible. Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenally successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks. It reveals the dark side of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an insider's edge. Shannon believed it was possible for a smart investor to beat the market—and William Poundstone's Fortune's Formula will convince you that he was right.

It was the most brutal corporate restructuring in Wall Street history. The 2015 bankruptcy brawl for the storied casino giant, Caesars Entertainment, pitted brilliant and ruthless private equity legends against the world's most relentless hedge fund wizards. In the tradition of Barbarians at the Gate and The Big Short comes the riveting, multi-dimensional poker game between private equity firms and distressed debt hedge funds that played out from the Vegas Strip to Manhattan boardrooms to Chicago courthouses and even, for a moment, the halls of the United States Congress. On one side: Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital. On the other: the likes of Elliott Management, Oaktree Capital, and Appaloosa Management. The Caesars bankruptcy put a twist on the old-fashioned casino heist. Through a $27 billion leveraged buyout and a dizzying string of financial engineering transactions, Apollo and TPG—in the midst of the post-Great Recession slump—had seemingly snatched every prime asset of the company from creditors, with the notable exception of Caesars Palace. But Caesars’ hedge fund lenders and bondholders had scooped up the company’s paper for nickels and dimes. And with their own armies of lawyers and bankers, they were ready to do everything necessary to take back what they believed was theirs—if they could just stop their own infighting. These modern financiers now dominate the scene in Corporate America as their fight-to-the-death mentality continues to shock workers, politicians, and broader society—and even each other. In The Caesars Palace Coup, financial journalists Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap illuminate the brutal tactics of distressed debt mavens—vultures, as they are condemned—in the sale and purchase of even the biggest companies in the world with billions of dollars hanging in the balance.

Published annually since 1992, the 2005 edition of this bestselling guide continues to gain fame as the best available source for information on U.S. casinos. The new 2005 edition lists more than 650 casinos in 35 states and comes complete with maps of all states showing where the casinos are located, plus detailed maps of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno and the Mississippi gambling resort towns of Biloxi and Tunica.

This book aims to challenge current thinking about serious youth violence and gangs, and their racialisation by the media and the police. Written by an expert with over 14 years’ experience in the field, it brings together research, theory and practice to influence policy. Placing gangs and urban violence in a broader social and political economic context, it argues that government-led policy and associated funding for anti-gangs work is counter-productive. It highlights how the street gang label is unfairly linked by both the news-media and police to black (and urban) youth street-based lifestyles/cultures and friendship groups, leading to the further criminalisation of innocent black youth via police targeting. The book is primarily aimed at practitioners, policy makers, academics as well as those community-minded individuals concerned about youth violence and social justice.

The Dark Side of the Wall Street is a bold and candid effort to reveal the nature of Wall Street and the manipulative role it plays in American and global politics. The author is fearless in exposing the dark side of Wall Street, beginning with the Reagan administration in the eighties. Unsavory practices are revealed include the development of junk bonds and mortage-backed security, the securitization of mortgages–which ignited the subprime mortgage crisis and ultimately lead to the financial meltdown.The book also reveals the collaboration between the American financial elite and American political elite–including President Barack Obama–who despite his rhetoric on the campaign trail, made deals with Wall Street tycoons in secret meetings.Mah vividly portrays the role that Washington's key economic policymakers, people such as Alan Greenspan, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Timonthy Geithner, played in the Wall Street financial crisis. Additionally, this book debunks the financial myths and legends surrounding Wall Street heavyweights Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, George Soros, Sandford Weill, Julian Robertson and John Paulson.