About the Book
Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump keeps saying everything is rigged? Well, that's because he knows how to rig things; some of which were his casinos. Have you ever wondered if he was a Mafia capo? Just when you thought you knew everything about Donald Trump, the truth of how the Mafia, the Atlantic City casino industry, and Donald Trump stole billion$ "Without a Gun" off naive tourists and gamblers by rigging the games and controlling their employees with psychological head games boarding on strong-arm tactics.
This riveting tell-all follows the book's author, from infancy to young adulthood, as he tries to figure out the reality around him. While attending college, eight miles west of Las Vegas east (Atlantic City, New Jersey), at the age of 19, our protagonist signs up to be a casino craps dealer to make extra spending money on the weekends, only to find out that the games are fixed like a Boardwalk carnival game and he is working for the Mafia.
From 1984 to 1991, Lou Levite, Jr., is working for three separate casinos; the last three years for Donald Trump at his flagship casino and Atlantic City centerpiece, Trump Plaza. He describes in detail, working in the business, recalling the gamblers, the celebrities dealt to, how the games are rigged, and how the employees were expected to act. Lou runs into legal problems with his daughter's mother, Mary, an ex-Caesar's craps dealer who at the time is working for a lawyer who was the son of the well-known Atlantic City Mafioso member Paul 'Skinny' D'Amato. She uses her connections to get rid of Lou, but he's not going willingly. Add to that the many years working in the casino industry, and he is taken to attempt suicide. After yelling at his family from behind a locked door one morning about how sick and tired he is of stepping on buttons and hitting switches to steal from people to make Donald Trump look like a hero when he is nothing but a mafia crook, his door is kicked in by two police officers who bring him to the nut ward to silence him. After two weeks, Lou is released from the hospital, where he turns to extortion against Mary to make his life brighter. It works, but only lasts a year and Mary goes back to trying to get rid of Lou. He later meets Frank, a man dating his mother boasts that he's been twice arrested for murder and that he used to run the Trump Castle casino, was a good friend of Ivana Trump's, and to have been Donald Trump's roommate at the Wharton School of Business. Frank offers to help him out of his predicament, but by then it is too late. After feeling cornered and about to be killed by the Mafia, Lou leaves his family and friends behind, going underground in the hopes of surviving this contract he believes Donald Trump has a hand in. Is Donald Trump a Mafia Don? Maybe. But Lou is only alive today to tell this unbelievable story because he changed his name and spent many years in hiding. An interesting read as you watch this young man plan for and make his escape from Donald Trump and the Mafia in a world before computers, the Internet or cell phones. A must read for Trump enthusiast under the age of forty and the rest of us as well.
About the Author :
Lou Levite, born in 1964, was an Atlantic City casino craps and blackjack dealer from 1984 through 1991. After completing Without A Gun, he went underground where he changed his name to the Nom De Guerre he went by since, Gnome, and went back to being a hippie. When he was not following the Grateful Dead or Phish around the country, he was traveling all and living in the national forests at Rainbow Gatherings throughout the United States. With his Rainbow Family mentors, David Dodge, and William Thomas, a.k.a. Thomas--the man who lived in the Peace Tent across the street from the White House--Lou was taught and self-taught in law and the courtroom game and spent 1992 to 1999 as an activist living mostly in or around Atlanta. While under the tutelage of David Dodge, co-discoverer of the unknown 13th amendment of 1819 (a concealed amendment which dealt with the emoluments clause), Lou wrote a book on the subject using his Nom De Guerre. He has always made the time to help a friend or stranger in need, while never asking for anything in return. In and out of jail as an occupational hazard, he spent a full year in jail and state prison for refusing to lower his window any further than he had, to talk to and give an officer what he had already requested and gotten. After leaving jail in December of 2000, and earning a degree in Internet and Computer Programing, he stayed in Atlanta until relocating to Florida during the spring of 2002. In 2007, Lou had a flooring company, when he saw the oncoming housing crash and bought an RV to live in and use as a command center for the revolution that he also saw coming. In 2011, that revolution came in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement, of which he was a major player in, but which was quickly put down that same year. At the age of 50, he retired from activism and went into creating tie-dyed clothing. After selling at swap meets on the west coast, he was never able to enjoy a life of retirement and went back to attending activist actions. The last action he participated in was in 2016 at the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. There, he attended an action focused on preventing the energy companies from running the Dakota Access Pipeline through the Sioux nation land and under and across a lake they depend on for drinking water. In the spring of 2017, Lou attended his last action only as a neutral observer. He has since been living as a recluse, alone in his RV, somewhere in the continental United States.
Review :
What an amazing book!!! Lou 'Gnome' Levite hits a grand slam in every chapter of this book. Like an old extra-innings game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. The only thing I was upset with was that I reached the end of the book. "Without A Gun" is a must-read for any Trump realist and Trump supporter. Philipos Melaku-Bello, Peace Tent, Washington D.C...
Lou Levite's Without A Gun is a breath of fresh air in an ever-growing genre of books critical of the 45th POTUS. Though it explores the decades of Donald Trump's corruption in striking and dizzying detail, this book sets itself apart with its unapologetic, fast-paced, and frenetic look at life as a dealer in a Trump casino. Andrew W. Donaldson
