Cover; Half-title; Series-title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; ONE From Religion to Risk Management: What to Do When Facing Uncertainty?; Origins of Lasting Prejudice; Volatile Beliefs; From Religion to Risk, from Lots to Betting; Chance and Providence: Upstairs, Downstairs; Conclusion; TWO Anything Wrong with Gambling as a Pastime?; What Did Gambling Have to Do with Military Readiness?; Prohibitions on New Ways of Having Fun; English Prohibitions on Poor People's Pastimes; If Not Cockfights, How About a Drink?; Secular Theories Condemning Gambling

If There Are No Circuses for the Masses, How to Calm Them Down?How Did the United States Come to Prohibit Drinking?; The 1906 Act and Since: Familiar Patterns; The Change in English Attitudes and Laws; Law and Gambling in the New World; Conclusion; THREE Are You Rich? Risk-Taking and Gambling, or the Leapfrogging Instinct; If You Are Not Rich, What Do You Do?; Facts; The Attraction of Big Prizes; The Poor and Those Falling Behind; Reversal of Fortune; Statistical Analysis: Correcting Its Pitfalls; Are Gamblers Reckless or Criminals?; What Do Winners Do with the Money?

Compulsive Gamblers: An AsideConclusion; FOUR Betting on Futures and Creating Prices; False Ideas: Bad Laws, Bad Policies; Back to Basics; The Tulipmania That Never Was: Part 1; More on Insurance and Gambling; Legal Confusions and Political Debates: Property Rights and Prices; Stabilizing and Destabilizing Speculations; Telecommunications and Speculation; or, How to Outlaw the Competition; Gamblers and Speculators: More Confusions; FIVE Gambling as Banking: Poker, Junk Bonds, and Central Banks; Gambling Is Not a Zero-Sum Game; Preventing Financial Intermediation by Law: Protecting Noblemen

The Volatile Road to Democratized CapitalVolatile Ranks and Taking Chances; When the Rich and Poor Intermingle, Lessons for the John Laws; The Tulipmania That Never Was: Part 2; Gambling in Venice; Banking on Gamblers; From Poker Banks to Clearinghouses; Poker Banks and Junk Bonds; From Banking on Gambling to Gambling on Central Banking; SIX Lottery Is a Taxation, and Heav'n Be Prais'd, It Is Easily Rais'd; Lotteries and Public Finance; Lottery Finance by English Governments; Lottery Finance in the New World: Origins of Investment Banking; From Lotteries to Banking; Toward Prohibition

Lotteries as Public Finance in CanadaThe Rebirth of Lotteries; If Not Lotteries, Then Sweepstakes; Gambling Today in America; SEVEN Politics and Prohibitions; or, What's a Good Tax Anyway?; Lotteries as a Regressive Tax: An Irrelevant Argument; Theories of Taxation without Foundations; How Do Governments Spend the Money?; Gamblers at Opera's Gates; Legalizing Gambling to Bring Prosperity; What Is a Good Tax; or, Who Guards the Guardians?; Impacts of Prohibition; Prohibitions in the United States and Elsewhere; Other Impacts of Prohibition in the United States; Taxing Foreigners

Prohibitions in the United Kingdom and the United States