Background Reading
High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s Gambling Addiction
By Sam Skolnik
Synopsis: A MUST-READ. Skolnik, a former investigative reporter for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Las Vegas Sun, pulls back the curtain on government’s failed policy of predatory gambling and never lets go. Using first-rate investigative journalism combined with poignant narratives of gambling addiction, Skolnik’s book provides an in-depth expose of the gambling business and our government’s complicity with it. He reveals how America’s gambling addiction rates have steadily risen, helped along by the marketing practices used by predatory gambling operators to target specific demographics, particularly Asian-Americans.
Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits
By Earl Grinols, PhD, Baylor University
Synopsis: The most thorough analysis of the cost-benefit issues of legalized gambling attempted to date. Concludes that the costs outweigh the benefits by more than three to one.
An Unsafe Bet: The Dangerous Rise of Gambling and the Debate We Should Be Having
By Jim Orford, Emeritus Professor, University of Birmingham (UK) School of Psychology
Synopsis: Orford spotlights how government’s policy of predatory gambling represents a serious danger to public health due to its inherent addiction potential, which is being intentionally minimized by gambling operators and governments.
On Liberty
By John Stuart Mill
Synopsis: John Stuart Mill, the father of the libertarian vision, wrote in this famous work of political philosophy that each individual has the right to act as he wants so long as these actions do not harm others. Today, no business in America is doing more to harm others than the predatory gambling trade.
United States International Gambling Report series
Edited By Prof. John Warren Kindt
Synopsis: The series provides readers with an in-depth overview of gambling policy, including the motivations of federal and state decision makers and the goals and developing trends within the gambling industry. You can buy the reports here, including the new 2010 volume of the series, which is titled The Gambling Threat to Economies and Financial Systems: Internet Gambling
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
Synopsis: Spotlights the strategies used by tobacco interests to willfully misuse science to deceive the public and political leaders. Many of these same strategies are used by predatory gambling interests in America today.
Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business
By David Johnston
Synopsis: Johnston documents in a must-read account how the gambling business became enmeshed with corporate America. Written in 1992, Johnston displays an uncanny vision of what was in store for America when it began to legalize commercial gambling. He vividly demonstrates how legal gambling creates no new wealth and does not deliver on the rosy promises made by proponents. The truth remains unchanged today.
Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas
By Christina Binkley
Synopsis: The former Wall Street Journal reporter provides a must-read account of three prominent casino operators and reveals some of their highly predatory business practices.
How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation
By Michael Nelson and John Lyman Mason
Synopsis: Nelson and Mason examine how southern states, the last region in the nation to embrace legalized gambling, have faced the decision to allow casinos and lotteries in their communities.
The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle over an American Institution
By Matthew Sweeney
Synopsis: Sweeney provides a history of the American lottery and delves into how the institution went from being banned nationwide to seeing itself flourish in recent times in the name of school kids and senior citizens.
Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World’s Largest Casino
By Jeff Benedict
Synopsis: Benedict reveals the mysterious roots of Connecticut’s Pequot tribe, the racial tension that divides its members, and internal power struggle over who controls the incredible amounts of money generated from Foxwoods, the largest casino in the world.
Money for Nothing: One Man’s Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions
By Edward Ugel
Synopsis: Ugel, who started gambling as a teenager, tells his own personal story of addiction and the story of the unregulated but legal industry that preys on recent lottery winners by selling them money in exchange for a portion of their future lottery payments.
Governing Fortune: Casino Gambling in America
By Edward Morse and Ernest Goss
Synopsis: The book analyzes the costs and benefits of legalized casino gambling and the policy decisions affecting its regulation.
The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America
By Sally Denton and Robert Morris
Synopsis: Denton and Morris’ investigative history simultaneously explores the crimes and malfeasance of Las Vegas and the expansion of the Vegas philosophy of greed and artifice into a wholesale American model.
Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America
By Charles Clotfelter and Phillip Cook
Synopsis: An excellent examination of the state lottery system in America.
The Luck Business
By Robert Goodman
Synopsis: Goodman persuasively shows how the gambling industry milks existing wealth and siphons off money from retail businesses and the manufacturing industry. He further investigates how gambling interests have enlisted government as a full partner.
Nicotine Dreams: A Story of Compulsive Gambling
By Katie Cunningham
Synopsis: Meet Kim, a fairly ordinary, middle-aged woman with a job, two adult children, and a difficult husband. For enjoyment she plays the stock market, buys expensive handbags and sneaks an occasional cigarette. But when a casino opens within driving distance of her house, her life as she knows it will soon be over. This is a story of addiction. This is a story of one woman’s descent into gambling hell, where the compulsion to play slots and poker machines is so great, she will risk it all in order to place just one more bet.
Hitting the Jackpot: The Inside Story of the Richest Indian Tribe in History
By Brett Fromson
Synopsis: Fromson chronicles the rise of Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut.
Legalized Gambling: For and Against
By Rod Evans and Mark Hance, Editors
Synopsis: Compiled in late 1990’s, this volume captures all the main arguments on both sides of this controversy, many of which the gambling interests still deceptively promote today.
Gripped by Gambling
By Marilyn Lancelot
Synopsis: Lancelot’s personal story begins with alcohol addiction, followed by prescription drugs, overeating, and eventually gambling.
Switching Addictions
By Marilyn Lancelot
Synopsis: Lancelot wrote the book after hearing hundreds of recovering gamblers and alcoholics say, “And then I switched addictions.” It’s a book filled with different addictions, warning signs, and tips on how to recognize and recover from each one.
She Bets Her Life: A True Story of Gambling Addiction
By Mary Sojourner
Synopsis: Sojourner takes both an objective and a deeply personal look at the psychological and physiological impact of gambling addiction on women.