The Lottery Wars
The Lottery Wars

Author: Matthew Sweeney

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1608191079

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Despite the infinitesimal odds, more than half of Americans admit to occasionally playing the lottery. We wait on long lines and give up our coffee breaks. We scratch tickets, win, and spend the winnings on more scratch tickets. We play our "lucky" numbers, week in and week out. In a country where gambling is ostensibly illegal, this is a strange state of affairs. In colonial Jamestown, the first lottery was created despite conservative opposition to the vice of gambling. Now, 42 states sponsor lotteries despite complaints of liberals who see them as a regressive tax on the poor. Why do we all play this game that brings no rewards, and leaves us rifling through the garbage for the ticket we swear would be a winner if we could only find it? How has this game persisted, even flourished, in defiance of so much opposition? In this observant, intelligent book, Matthew Sweeney gives a history of the American lottery, stopping along the way to give us the bizarre--sometimes tragic--stories that it makes possible: the five-million-dollar miracle man who became a penniless preacher investing in a crackpot energy scheme; the senator whose untimely injury allowed the lottery to pass into law in his home state; and many others. Written with insight and wit, Dreaming in Numbers gives us the people and the stories that built a nationwide institution, for better or worse.

Lottery Wars
Lottery Wars

Author: Randy Bobbitt

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780739117385

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Between 1986 and 2005, nearly every state in the Southeast grappled with one or more proposals for a state-run lottery. The political battles and marketing campaigns leading up to the decisions generated considerable public debate and media attention. Pro-lottery and anti-lottery groups executed costly and labor-intensive campaigns aimed at generating the involvement of the media, politicians, and voters. Using a variety of case studies, Lottery Wars examines those debates and campaigns from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Using thousands of media articles and government documents, in addition to dozens of interviews with politicians, religious leaders, and journalists who covered the campaigns, Bobbitt brings up-to-date the research on state lotteries in the Southeast United States. Accessible and journalistic in style, Lottery Wars is an ideal supplement to any political communication course.

Random Riches
Random Riches

Author: Manfred Zollinger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1317071557

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Gambling is a fascinating subject which for many centuries has attracted public interest. Yet, despite its ubiquity, gambling (or gaming) leads a marginal existence within the boundaries of scholarly research. Providing a longue duree survey, this volume promotes a historical understanding of the subject enriched with a diverse academic approach that draws upon sociology, economics and psychology. Each chapter in the collection is the work of a renowned scholar with a long standing interest in gambling research. The contributions offer historical analyses of the medieval origins of the 'Gambler State' and of mathematical risk calculation. They cast light on the roles of different stakeholders in gambling including the playing public, business, and the state. They provide a controversial discussion of the alleged 'pathological' nature of chance games and the reasons for either regulating or freeing them from state control. Last but not least, two authors deal with country-by-country specifics in gaming cultures and gambling markets. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this volume chart the development of European gambling culture from the medieval to modern times. In so doing it provides essential context for both historical and current debates about the nature of gambling and lotteries, addiction to gambling, poverty and social degradation on the fringes of the welfare state.

Behind the Front
Behind the Front

Author: Craig Gibson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-03-27

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0521837618

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This book uncovers the vital relationships between British troops and local inhabitants in France and Belgium during the First World War.

Ancestors of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter
Ancestors of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

Author: Jeff Carter

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0786489545

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During his presidency, Jimmy Carter received a comprehensive analysis of his family's genealogy, dating back 12 generations, from leaders of the Mormon Church. More recently Carter's son Jeff took over the family history, determined to discover all that he could about his ancestors. This resulting volume traces every ancestral line of both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter back to the original immigrants to America and chronicles their origins, occupations, and life dates. Among his forebears Carter found cabinet makers, farmers, preachers, illegitimate children, slave owners, indentured servants, a former Hessian soldier who fought against Napoleon, and even a spy for General George Washington at Valley Forge. With never-before-published historic photographs and a foreword by President Jimmy Carter, this is the definitive saga of a remarkable American family.