“The Gambler” is my latest book, the rags-to-riches tale of Kirk Kerkorian, a poor immigrant’s son who made and lost billions on bold business ventures. I’ve written about other self-made billionaires, but those others were not so heroic.

There was the former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, for example. He looted his billions from an impoverished country. And Colombian drug lords, the “gentlemen of Cali”– they ran the biggest, richest crime syndicate in the history of crime.

Fascinating story material in every case. But now, with thanks to publisher Harper Collins, “The Gambler” joins my other billionaires on bookshelves now.

The Gambler

KIRK KERKORIAN combined the daring of a pioneer aviator, the fortitude of a scrappy boxer and the cunning of an inscrutable poker player with a maestro’s sense of timing in the cutthroat world of business wheeling and dealing to become one of the most successful self-made tycoons in American history. Yet, the press-shy billionaire’s inspiring personal story is largely unknown.

His Armenian immigrant parents arrived in Los Angeles broke and struggled to avoid evictions. Kirk quit school in the eighth grade, cleared brush in the Sierra-Nevada mountains, worked as a day laborer at MGM Studios and tried to launch a professional boxing career.

His biography is one of those Only in America tales of an immigrant dreamer.

He ended up owning the film studio where he once worked for a couple of dollars a day. He transformed the leisure business and the face of Las Vegas. Three times he built the world’s biggest resort hotel. He became one of the world’s richest men. Yet, he never put his name on any buildings. He rarely granted interviews. And he gave away billions without fanfare to charities and humanitarian causes.

From News to Books to Screens

It started as a front page story in the Los Angeles Times about the fall of the Cali drug cartel (2007). It was also the public introduction of Jorge Salcedo, the extraordinary man inside the crime syndicate whose daring and defiance brought it crashing down.

Four years later the story was published by Random House as the book “At the Devil’s Table” (2011). A series of foreign-language versions followed. In Spanish it was “En la Boca del Lobo.” In Portuguese: “A Mesa com O Diabo.” In Dutch: “De Rechterhand van de Duivel.” In Polish: “Uwiklany.” Still to come is an Italian version.

Next came television versions. In 2014 Sony-Teleset released its 80-episode Spanish-language telenovela “En la Boca del Lobo” based closely on the book. And in 2017 the popular Netflix series “Narcos” based its Season 3 episodes on the Cali cartel. The author was a story consultant for the series.

A feature film version is planned.

More about the backstory of this project.

PLOT BY PLOT, LIE BY LIE:
From Democrat to Despot

When once-adoring crowds turned on the regime of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in 1986, the couple was forced to flee, taking along billions looted from their desperately poor nation.

Left behind, along with a legacy of excess and oppression, were more than 2,000 pairs of designer shoes and the ousted dictator’s handwritten diary.

The oddly revealing document is a rare piece of history.  In some 3,000 pages it charts the lies, plots and palace intrigues behind a popularly elected leader’s transformation to delusional and messianic dictator.

Diary of a Dictator – Ferdinand & Imelda: The Last Days of Camelot.

Stories from The Times

“THE MORGUE” IS AN OLD NEWSPAPER TERM that to journalists of a certain age refers to the mildew-scented repository of old stories — the clip files. Today it’s more likely to be called the editorial library. Of course, in the electronic age there’s no place for actual paper clippings. Stories are no longer logged away in those musty drawers and buried from public view. Here’s a digital sampling of timeless stories from the author’s byline collection, retrieved from L.A. Times morgue:

RACING TO AMERICA — One rust-bucket of an old ship and its passenger manifest filled with “undesirable aliens” defies a stormy Atlantic and swelling anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. to beat out richer and more acceptable migrants in the great Quota Race of 1923. It’s a time much like today with raging debate against foreigners and with political forces trying to stem their influx. Among those 1920s “undesirables” are displaced Eastern Europeans, Armenians, Greeks, Russians, Jews, pacifist Mennonites…and the author’s family.

IRANIAN SPIES, ASSASSINS — He was Iran’s prime minister when the Islamic revolution forced him from office and into exile in Paris. For the next decade Shapour Bakhtiar uses France as his sanctuary and platform from which to wage a public relations war against religious hardliners. His brutal murder by Iranian government assassins exposes a network of spies and assassins deployed against Tehran’s critics around the world. A story based on rare access to French investigative reports may also help explain some of the West’s continuing distrust of Tehran’s regime.

TERROR IN NEW YORK CITY — After a devastating terrorist blast, how do federal bomb investigators piece together bits and fragments of seemingly worthless rubble to find markers that identify who did it? The author gains special access to the crack ATF forensics team that had swiftly unraveled just such a mystery — the deadly World Trade Center bombing of 1993.

ARIZONA PRISON BREAK — Three kids break their father out of the state penitentiary in hopes of staging a family reunion across the border in Mexico. Their audacious plot is carried out in broad daylight without firing a shot and no one gets hurt. Not at first. Could this true crime story be the stuff of legends? The author explores the dark side of family love and loyalty in exclusive interviews with the boys’ mother.