What's Luck Got to Do with It?

CHAPTER 4

There’s No Stopping It Now

From Bans to Bookies

[T]he sweetness of winning muchand seeing others lose had turned to thesourness of losing much and seeing others win.—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Traditional American entertainment and relaxation with dice and card playing goes far back to the original colonies, over a hundred and fifty years before the American Revolution. But the explosion of gambling was inevitable under the new democracy. And with the purchase of Louisiana at the turn of the nineteenth century came New Orleans, where ...