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Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, reviewed by Jared B.

Ben Mezrich, a former Harvard graduate, writes his first non-fiction book telling the story of six M.I.T. students who won millions of dollars playing blackjack. The exciting story tells how they managed to take Vegas, and still be around to tell about it.

The book follows the experiences of Kevin Lewis, an electrical engineering major at M.I.T. who agrees to tell his story to Mezrich after meeting him at a party one night. Lewis had two friends, Jason Fisher and Andre Martinez, who always seemed to disappear many weekends to Las Vegas. After they finally agree to take him to Atlantic City for the weekend and divulge some of their secrets to him, Kevin is hooked. They introduce him to the M.I.T. blackjack club, a group of self-proclaimed nerds headed by Micky Rosa, a math-whiz and one of the youngest graduates in school history. Martinez, Fisher, Micky and the rest of the club teach Kevin their simple, yet innovative card counting system, and train him to carry it out in real life. The book follows all the big wins and the close calls they had.

The greatest strength of the book is in the author’s writing style. He manages to tell these kids exhilarating story, yet weave in enough information about their system and why it works. It allows the book to be a great blend of part story, part Card Counting for Dummies.

While the informative aspect of the book is one of its greatest strengths, at times it can become rather monotonous. Mezrich does a great job of detailing the ins-and-outs of the system, but some readers really might not care how to derive the “true count” or that the word “eggs” signified a count of twelve in their code. This information often seems to be interjected at poor times, during some of the more exciting scenes which can serve to water down some of the more exciting moments.

Overall I would give this book four-and-a-half stars out of five. Mizrech’s story, Bringing Down the House, is a thrilling account of these students’ experiences. It would definitely satisfy the interests of anyone who wants to know more about blackjack and Las Vegas. It showed that these kids really could beat the house.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Las Vegas and has ever really wondered if they could beat the odds and win big.

The book follows the experiences of Kevin Lewis, an electrical engineering major at M.I.T. who agrees to tell his story to Mezrich after meeting him at a party one night. Lewis had two friends, Jason Fisher and Andre Martinez, who always seemed to disappear many weekends to Las Vegas. After they finally agree to take him to Atlantic City for the weekend and divulge some of their secrets to him, Kevin is hooked. They introduce him to the M.I.T. blackjack club, a group of self-proclaimed nerds headed by Micky Rosa, a math-whiz and one of the youngest graduates in school history. Martinez, Fisher, Micky and the rest of the club teach Kevin their simple, yet innovative card counting system, and train him to carry it out in real life. The book follows all the big wins and the close calls they had.