Kategoria BISAC: Games & Activities >> Gambling - General (see also Self-Help - Compulsive Behavior)

Why has gambling become so accepted in the U.S. when other historical vices, like smoking and drinking, continue to evoke morality-based opposition? That simple but intriguing question guides this path-breaking volume, the first interdisciplinary academic study of gambling. Led by the renowned Alan Wolfe and with essays by experts at the country's premiere centers in public policy, clinical addiction, law, gaming, psychology, sociology, moral philosophy, theology, and the arts, "Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape" is a tour de force of the booming cultural and moral phenomenon...

"Mr. Scarne was not one who, when the boys rode off to war, gave them good advice, chocolate bars, or woolen underwear. Rather he took the men aside, first singly and then in groups, warning that if they like to gamble with dice and cards they were heading for an Army and a Navy abounding in plain and fancy sharpers and crooks. Then, from his incomparable knowledge of the subject, he instructed in spotting such crooked gentry and, if necessary, exposing them.

"In due time Mr. Scarne's activities around his New Jersey home became of interest to the editors of Yank, the Army weekly....

Cardano, next to Vesalius the greatest physician of his day, was also a devoted and skilled gambler who played for personal pleasure and profit. His mathematical genius enabled him to devise simple rules of probability for his own benefit and for his gambling contemporaries. These he collected in his Book on Games of Chance and embellished them with essays on the tricks of cheats and kibitzers, as well as on psychological rules of play.

In this biography of a stormy Renaissance personality, Cardano's gambling studies are deciphered for the first time, and a translation of the...

The great majority of Americans--more than 80%--say they approve of gambling, even if they themselves don't gamble. Still, deep divisions persist in our attitudes toward the gambling industry. Is it profoundly destructive, preying on human weakness and stripping its victims of their sustenance and dignity? Or is it a vehicle of the American dream--an engine of personal enrichment, enormous public revenue, and economic development? The industry's explosive growth has sharpened the debate, radically altering the gambling landscape and dramatically raising the stakes involved. Author Richard...