Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker tells the fascinating and deadly story of one of the Lone Star State's greatest racketeers. Benny Binion ruled the Dallas underworld in the 1940s, and went on to be a founding father of modern Las Vegas. There he started the World Series of Poker. S.C. Gwynne, author of the best-selling Empire of the Summer Moon, says this about Blood Aces: "Doug J. Swanson has written a terrific, propulsive account of a man and a subculture I can virtually guarantee you know little or nothing about. This is dazzlingly original stuff, and it's entertaining as hell."

Doug J. Swanson is an investigative reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has twice been named the top newspaper reporter in Texas. He also has written five novels set in Texas. His novel Big Town was a finalist for the Edgar Award and won the John Creasey Award from the British Crime Writers Association. Swanson is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and was a John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University. He lives in Fort Worth. Blood Aces is his first non-fiction book.