Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island?

Jane Gaskin did exactly that, trading in the family home to begin a new life in the

tropics.

But she soon discovers that Paradise has its secrets.

I'm Alice Levine, and this is the price of Paradise,

the island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption, and murder.

Wish you were here.

Follow the price of Paradise Now, wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm a ambassador with Tyler Anbinder.

The book is plentiful country, the great potato famine and the making of Irish New York.

We're in a moment now when entrepreneurial fever strikes a note of genius.

There's a man named Phelan, who's an extremely famous billiards player. Huge crowds gather around him.

There's a man named Collander who has a good sense to marry Phelan's daughter,

15-year-old daughter, and live happily with her.

However, the two of them have an idea which is to mass-produced pool tables,

but how to win the favor of so many pool table makers in New York, billiards tables.

The idea is to make a table like no other.

Professor Ulysses Grant is a pool player.

What do they do for it? So Phelan and Collander, as you mentioned, create what's considered

the best pool table of the era. Michael Phelan was a famous billiards champion, but always complained that the rails on the pool

tables did not give accurate terms.

And he complained about this, and his son-in-law, who was not much of a pool player, but had a nose for business, said,

we can make some money on this. We're going to patent this. And so the son-in-law patents fail his idea for better pool table cushions.

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