Why is gambling so accepted in the U.S. while other historical vices, such as smoking and drinking, continue to evoke morality-based opposition? That simple but intriguing question guides this pathbreaking volume, the first interdisciplinary academic study of gambling. Led by the renowned Alan Wolfe and Erik Owens with essays by experts at the country's premiere centers in public policy, clinical addiction, law, gaming, psychology, sociology, moral philosophy, theology, and the arts, Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape is a tour de force examination of this booming cultural and moral phenomenon that is so intricately woven into the fabric of American life. Both an attempt to understand gambling and an effort to predict its future consequences, the book is evocative and critical reading for American civic and church leaders, activists, historians, and government officials.

Contents:

I. The Politics and Policy of Gambling

1. The Importance of a Good Cause: Ends and Means in State Lotteries

2. The Politics of Sovereignty and Public Policy toward Gambling

3. Negotiating a Different Terrain: Morality, Policymaking, and Indian Gaming

4. New Politics, Same Old Vice: Gambling in the 21st Century

II. Individual Behavior and Social Impact

5. Behavioral and Brain Measures of Risk-Taking

6. Gambling with the Family?

7. Gambling and Morality: A Neuropsychiatric Perspective

8. The Unproblematic Normalization of Gambling in America

III. Theology, Gambling, and Risk

9. The Memory of Sin: Gambling in Jewish Law and Ethics

10. Grace and Gambling

11. The Criminal Law of Gambling: A Puzzling History

12. Playing and Praying: What s Luck Got to Do with It?

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