Working on the book reawakened my love of research. My goal was to approach the project with the fairness of a journalist and the rigor of a scholar. For the first time in more than a decade, I spent considerable time on college campuses and remembered how much I enjoyed their energy. In San Diego County, we are lucky to have world-class universities, top-shelf city and county library systems, and extremely helpful librarians and archivists. It would have been impossible to do this book without them.
I recently boxed up my research materials to make way for the next project, and I found that they filled two large bins. (Not pictured are the hundreds of digital documents and bookmarks.) Photo by David Clary.
I spent two intensive but happy research stints inside this building, the Lied Library at UNLV. The library houses an excellent special collection on gambling history freely accessible to independent researchers. (There’s also a Coffee Bean on the first floor, which is a nice touch.) Photo by David Clary.