Truth vs Illusion

Two weeks ago, there appeared in “The New York Times Book Review” a review of Derk DelGaudio’s just-published memoir, Amoralman: A True Story, and Other Lies, even though he says, “It is not a memoir.”

Rather, he says, “I had a story to tell about my days as a bust-out dealer, hired to cheat card players at a series of high-stakes poker games at a house in Beverly Hills. I told the story through a memoir.”

In the the first half of the book, Derek tells of his early years growing up in Colorado — first in Littleton and Aurora, and then in Colorado Springs. He never knew his father. His mother w...