An NPR Best Book of the Year "Astonishing. . . . Witty. . . . Tom Wolfe crossed with Tom Pynchon." –
The Washington Post "
The Noble Hustle is fierce, funny and totally worth the buy-in." –
New York Daily News "Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world." –
The Boston Globe "
The Noble Hustle, part love letter, part dark confessional, captures perfectly the mix of neurosis and narrative that makes gambling so appealing." –
Mother Jones "Whitehead goes to the table himself, and like a reporter on the front line of battle, he files stories as the action heats up...[Whitehead] uses poker to expand our sense of how human beings work."
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The New York Times Book Review "[A] trenchant, ruefully funny memoir of one man's attempt to dispel the banality of living with the anxiety of chance." –
USA Today
"Fascinating. . . . Funny. . . . It's hard not to root for the underdog." –
Chicago Tribune
"Mordantly funny from the first sentence. . . . Mr. Whitehead may not have gone home in the money, but he has a way with upstanding sentences." –
The Economist "Hilarious. . . . Equal parts philosophical and farcical." –
The Seattle Times
"Clever and entertaining." –
The Miami Herald
"[Whitehead's] reporting on the grimy glitz of casinos and competitive gambling has a funny, tragic, loser-chic sensibility." –
The New Yorker
"A literary guide to the often bizarre world of casino-poker tournaments." –
The Wall Street Journal
"Whitehead captures the sketchy and zombielike nature of poker tournament play well enough to leave you wishing this book came with a free bottle of Purell." –
Entertainment Weekly "A sly, shambling, self-appraising riff on how he–a fervent amateur (and newly divorced father)–braved a Las Vegas World Series of Poker tourney." –
Elle "From the first sentence to the last, Colson Whitehead never stops being clever. . . . If Whitehead played poker as well as he writes, he would have made the final table." –
The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Part memoir, part satire, part meditation on the fractured state of contemporary culture." –
Los Angeles Times
"A masterpiece of sportswriting." –
The Rumpus "Shares with [David Foster] Wallace's work the close attention of a wry, sharp intelligence to a populist pastime, a mix of casual and highfalutin diction, a self-deprecating voice that you're never sure is totally truthful in its deprecation, and a fondness for broad cultural pronouncements."
–The San Francisco Chronicle
