Overview

Every week, one in eight Americans place a bet on the dream of a life-changing lottery jackpot. Americans spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined. The story of lotteries in the United States may seem straightforward: tickets are bought predominately by poor people driven by the wishful belief that they will overcome infinitesimal odds and secure lives of luxury. The reality is more complicated. For a Dollar and a Dream shows how, in an era of stagnant upward mobility, millions of Americans turned to the lottery as their only chance at achieving the American Dream. Gamblers were not the only ones who bet on betting. As voters revolted against higher taxes in the late twentieth century, states saw legalized gambling as a panacea, a way of generating revenue without cutting public services or raising taxes. Alongside stories of lottery winners and losers, Jonathan Cohen shows how gamblers have used prayer to help them win a jackpot, how states tried to pay for schools with scratch-off tickets, and how lottery advertising has targeted lower income and nonwhite communities. For a Dollar and a Dream charts the untold history of the nation's lottery system, revealing how players and policymakers alike got hooked on hopes for a gambling windfall.

Full Product Details

9798212251594

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Jonathan D. Cohen is a program officer at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is coeditor of All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States and Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen. He received his PhD in history from the University of Virginia. Since 2015, Tom Lennon has produced over 100 audiobooks in a variety of genres. Today he works primarily in the genres of detective mystery, nonfiction, thriller, and memoir. A graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology with an engineering degree, Tom's day job for thirty-five-plus years was in sales and marketing with several Fortune 500 Companies in the HVAC Industry, where he has given thousands of presentations to groups from 5 to 5,000. Tom was born and raised in Northern New Jersey. After college he worked for a few years in Richmond, Virginia, before being transferred to Pennsylvania, where he still resides in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. When not in the studio being interrupted by a tuxedo cat named Oreo, Tom can frequently be found in or under his 1972 Mercury Cougar.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available