Synopses & Reviews
Gambling is a topic that can arouse a wide range of passionate and often controversial opinions. Is it a harmless pastime or a dangerous addiction? Does it corrupt the state or contribute much-needed funds to local communities? Whether we like it or not, gambling is now a major economic force in the United States. It pays $2.9 billion in taxes, creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, and as an industry has expanded tenfold in the last twenty-five years.
This book provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking collection of articles by internationally recognized experts in the study of gamblingùdoctors and lawyers, journalists and academics. It presents a diverse range of perspectives on the issue of gambling: from legal, political, and economic, to social, psychological, and ethical. Although many of the essays are strongly argued, the collection as a whole offers a balanced range of viewpoints and arguments, allowing reades to decide for themselves what role gambling should play in our society. Among the topics discussed are casino gambling and crime, the expansion of wagering on the Internet, the role of federal and state governments, the nature and extent of gambling addiction, Native American gambling, and the role of gambling in various parts of the world.
The stimulating, jargon-free articles in this entertaining and informative volume will help clarify one of the most important debates of our time.
About the Author
Gerda Reith, Ph.D., is assistant professor in sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the author of The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture, which won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize of 2000.
Table of Contents
Introduction : Pathology and profit : controversies in the expansion of legal gambling / Gerda Reith -- I. Current trends in commercial gambling -- Values and choices : the struggle to find balance with permitted gambling in modern society / William R. Eadington ; From local to global gambling cultures / Jan McMillen -- II. Economic and social costs and benefits -- Cutting the cards and craps : right thinking about gambling economics / Earl L. Grinols ; Grand illusions / Robert Goodman ; Community satisfaction with casino gambling : an assessment after the fact / B. Grant Stitt, Mark Nichols & David Giacopassi -- III. Law, crime, and commercial regulation -- Gambling and the law : the new millennium / I. Nelson Rose ; Is it a crime to bet on the net? / Michael E. Hammond ; Casino gambling and crime / Jay Albanese ; Fair deal for the player? regulation and competition as guarantors of consumer protection in commercial gambling / David Miers -- IV. Addiction debate -- Critical view of pathological gambling and addiction : comorbidity makes for syndromes and other strange bedfellows / Howard J. Shaffer ; Pathological gambling : what's in a name? or, how the United States got it wrong / Mark Dickerson ; Is gambling an addiction like drug and alcohol addiction? developing realistic and useful conceptions of compulsive gambling / Stanton Peele -- V. Social trends, problem gambling, and the challenge to public policy -- Paying the piper : gambling and problem gambling in America / Rachel A. Volberg ; Youth gambling : some social policy issues / Jeffrey L. Derevensky et al. ; Late-life gambling : the attitudes and behaviors of older adults / Dennis P. McNeilly & William J. Burke ; Public policy response to problem gambling / Keith Whyte -- VI. Psychological and environmental factors -- Environmental psychology of gambling / Mark Griffiths & Jonathan Parke ; Probability on the casino floor / Neil A. Manson -- VII. Ethical and philosophical issues -- Regulating vice : America's struggle with wicked pleasure / Jerome H. Skolnick ; Moral case for legalizing gambling / Peter Collins ; Playing the gods : gambling and spirituality, a new anthropological perspective / Kathryn Gabriel ; Combustion : an essay on the value of gambling / John Scanlan.