I recently read Ben Mezrich's, Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also loved Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption. Mezrich does a terrific job researching and weaving a narrative nonfiction story about people and business.

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions was interesting because it's about MIT students who become experts at card counting and make many, many trips to Vegas. They branch out to other casino locations and it turns out that their luck changes in Shreveport, LA of all places.

I thought the book was okay but not as great as the other two books I've read by Mezrich.

Really enjoyed this book as Mezrich is an excellent story-teller. It was a bit wordy at times and read like a fiction book, but overall I really enjoyed it. Having now read the book, I wish the movie more closely followed the book as the story was more fascinating than what is depicted in the movie.

Amazing! I’ve seen 21 but still couldn’t put this book down. The author is a genius and his commentary 100% added to and enhanced the story. This is the best kind of thriller because it’s a true story. The details of card counting are a lot more apparent here than in the movie.

Mezrich also expertly highlights the broader topic of the insatiable thirst for wealth and pleasure with which Vegas seems to naturally teem.
The statistics component is a math majors dream. I also loved the Boston descriptors bc it made me excited to be there

Thanks Michael Phelps for the rec

The book is well written, but what is irritating is that it holds itself out as a non-fiction, but after reading about the book online, it appears the book is far more fiction then non-fiction. The person that the book is centered around has apparently admitted several key scenes from the book didn't happen, and that many other scenes were similarly fabricated. Also, because many of the people in the book are composites of two or more people, it makes me wonder what, if anything, from the book is actually accurate. They should have described the book as "inspired by true events". Having said that, the book is well written, and was a page turner. I just wish the author/publisher was more honest about what the book really is. Hence, I lowered my rating by one star.

The story of Kevin Lewis and some other MIT kids of Asian descent, who were hand-picked by a former MIT prof to count cards in Vegas. Backed by “shady investors” that they supposedly never met, the team used a decades-old method of card counting (a modified version of “hi-lo,” based on the number of high cards left in the deck) and some interesting hand signals to collectively rake in the millions.

This is Mezrich’s first non-fiction book, and it shows; oh does it ever show. There is a small “details have been changed” notice under the copyright info, but this does not justify Mezrich’s copious use of detail and conversation that could not possibly be known to him, let alone accurately reported. It’s no great sin to use created conversation to capture the feel of a true event, but it’s disingenuous of the author not to at least acknowledge what he’s done. And while I don’t want to call him or Lewis a liar, the tacked-on drama (beatings in the bathroom of an off-shore casino; a break-in; a solitary poker chip left ominously on Lewis’ table) seem a bit too much ripped from just the style of thriller that Mezrich is apparently accustomed to writing. In sum, there might be an interesting story here, but this book, while admittedly fun to read, with its flat drama and unsympathetic characters (aw, poor Kevin, making a great living at a trading firm, trying to “get out” of the humdrum existence of the MIT grad with the house and two cars... boo hoo, guy) isn’t great.

it doesn’t help that I still don’t know how to play blackjack

the characters were hard to parse out until the end, with all of them sharing similar traits making it BORING

I know it’s about a person’s real life experience, and I don’t wish ill will on anyone, I promise, but I much rather read 300 pages of hardships versus 200 pages of exposition

This was an enjoyable read, although I admit my eyes and brain glossed over when explanations for blackjack and card counting became too detailed for my interests. The writing was fast-paced and enjoyable, detailed, and easy to read. The weird addition of the authors' "present" day research felt out of place and unnecessary to the book but was unique. I didn't struggle to book the book down at night, one reading session infact I closed the book feeling slightly bored, mostly due to the math, and blackjack and probability details I simply had no interest in understanding to enjoy the book. That says more about me as a reader than about the book or the author.

“Bringing Down the House” is definitely a page turner. The language is very descriptive and style of writing draws you in and makes you want to keep reading. There were some parts I thought were irrelevant to the storyline, but it was overall a very good book. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes action-packed books or books about Vegas.

Bringing Down the House

Ever wonder what some students at elite schools like MIT, Yale, Harvard, and many others do in their free time? Well in the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, you get to learn what a group of geniuses from MIT did and it’s not playing chess or studying or whatever you would expect your average college student at an elite school would be doing. It’s mostly through the perspective of Kevin Lewis a student at MIT who joins a group of card counters after he passes the test. All of these kids are very good with numbers obviously.

They start off in vegas they have a very good strategy. They have secret code words and signs that show when a deck is good or when it is bad. They have small players who are stationed at different tables and usually 3-4 big players who walk around waiting for a sign from the small players to come in when a deck that is promising. Most of the time they get away with it but the casinos are very good at catching things. Sometimes they get thrown out from certain casinos or get warning signs, so they come up with new identities and disguises to try and get around the casinos catching them. They get a lot of really big close calls. But they do win big a lot. Also it goes into detail about Kevin's personal life and how he keeps a regular job while still doing this every weekend. He gets to party with NBA players, go to boxing matches, and live the Vegas lifestyle but then he has a decision to make. Does he want to keep doing this and putting himself at risk or does he want to quit and live a normal and boring life compared to what he's living now.

Personally I really liked the book, I thought it was very interesting and kept me on the edge of my seat most of the time. It was well written and the author was very good at making things suspenseful. I recommend this to anyone who likes to play blackjack or anyone who likes gambling or someone beating the system. This is a book about card counting and them beating the casino (which is very rare) so this would be a good book for anyone who likes that. It is also based off a true story which I thought made it even cooler and more intriguing.

Interesting and intriguing. Keeps your focus.

Apparently this book is bullshit. Oh well. I was the sucker who shut off my critical tools when reading it and swallowed this hook-line-and-sinker. I should have known something was wrong when the geography of the Strip was fucked up in his mini-history of the rise of the mega-casinos. He placed Excalibur halfway down the Strip from Luxor (or was it MGM Grand), which is all wrong, they are right across the street from one another (which works out for either Luxor or MGM in relation to Excalibur), half way down the Strip from Luxor would be like the Bellagio or one of those casinos. I just thought he was taking some liberties, which he was, I mean it's not like it's difficult to tell the casinos apart just by looking at them.

So, when I was looking to see what other goodreaders thought of the book I found out that big parts of the book were fabricated. And like a good skeptic I googled and found out that apparently yes, Ben Mezrich liked to embellish. The only problem is that his embellishments are usually the exciting and more dramatic moments in the book. Opps.

Some goodreaders pointed out the awful dialogue. I guess that was there too, but honestly it gave the whole thing a very Vegas feel to me, there is something tin-eared, gaudy, and unreal about all of Vegas and I just kind of fit in the bad chatter to being expected from a story that mainly takes place where LA douche-bags mingle around with Cowboys and men wearing very unacceptable amounts of jewelry.

Oh, and to return to the first paragraph, I should have also been a little more skeptical when the author would forget to mention which casino they were in when say security guards kicked in the door and told them to leave. Why would you not give some info like that, especially when most of the book reads like a travel guide dropping names of places.

Oh well. It was a distracting and entertaining read and much much better than the pretty unremarkable movie the book inspired. I think I ended up enjoying this book more than I should have because it got me thinking about Vegas and thinking that I would like to go back there again soon, even if it is for my non-debauch enjoyment of slot machines with animal themes and delicious buffets.

Reads like the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey. Very entertaining and out of my normal genre.