The Automat

About the Book

One summer day in 1951, Jess Marcum, a highly moral, straight-laced, brilliant mathematician was seduced into a world of gamblers, mobsters, hustlers and casino operators. It was a world he conquered both mathematically and psychologically. Mathematically, because he bet only when he knew the odds were with him. Psychologically, because of the sadistic ways that lurked within his soul. In the end, however, he was the loser. The monies won, substantial indeed, were of little matter to him. Relationships, controlled and manipulated, inevitably disintegrated. Though a legend in his own time, beating the world’s greatest gamblers, he lost the ultimate game, the game he played against himself. Paying the price of an extraordinary and tragic existence, Jess Marcum, The Automat, was a genius who, in the final round, would come to lose not only his sanity, but his life as well.

About the Author

Sam Cohen retired after a long controversial career in nuclear weapon issues. During World War II he was assigned to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. After the war he joined the RAND Corporation as a nuclear weapon analyst. In the course of his work he developed the technical/military concept of the ‘neutron bomb’ in 1958. He has consulted with the Los Alamos and Livermore nuclear weapon laboratories, the U.S. Air Force, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He has authored numerous articles and books on nuclear issues.