EPSOIDE 8 DAVID SCHWARTZ & BRAD LEWIS

This week's broadcast includes TWO great guests.

DAVID G. SCHWARTZ, (no relation to your host, Howard Schwartz) is the head of the Gaming Studies Department at UNLV. He is the author of
"Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip", a book-length, essay on the history and evolution of the Las Vegas experience from its earliest days to the the advent of the mega resort. His second book, "Cutting the Wire", examines the political, social, and cultural ideas that moved Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to suggest the Wire Act (a law banning interstate transmission of gambling information), Congress to approve it, and President Kennedy to sign it into law, as well as the consequences of the law. He covers it all -- how this law first developed, how it helped fight a war against organized crime, and how it is being used today to restrict Americans from internet gambling. His latest work is titled "Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling ", which explains how the need to gamble shaped human history from the Ice Age to the Information Age when people spend nearly one trillion dollars worldwide on gambling a year.

BRAD LEWIS is the author of the Hollywood Celebrity Gangster: Mickey Cohen. All the whispered anecdotes, the news items and the underside of the crime rackets where Mickey operated are in his book, open to scrutiny. From Bugsy Siegel to Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia to Meyer Lansky and Carlos Marcello, Mickey knew them well and worked closely with them for many years.