Gambling: Don't Bet on It

By Rex M. Rogers

Book Overview

A newly revised and updated look at the rising popularity of legalized gambling and its detrimental effects on individuals and society.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082543646X
• ISBN13: 9780825436468
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Kregel Publications
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Challenging An Epidemic

University President Rex Rogers presents a poignant and well-documented societal study with his 2005 221-page paperback "Gambling: Don't Bet On It". With 37 pages of documentation (from the past 100 years) and a five-page bibliography Rogers convincingly proves that gambling, "as the world's second oldest distraction", is a most troubling American social epidemic. This book is a call to return gambling to its historical position of pariah and anathema. Rogers says gambling is too costly (producing about $500 billion in 2004!) giving back little to the community. Gambling is second only to the federal government in making money but provides little reward. Consider more of the book's disturbing points: · "... Gambling creates its own morality and gradually debilitates the people it touches" (page 39). · "The year 1994 was the first year that Americans spent more on gambling than their children's toys" (page 43). · "Half of the nation's 562 federally recognized [Native American] tribes with a total of 1.9 million people are trying to get into gambling" (page 47). · "Gambling establishment owners are typically no longer local people" (page 57). · "To believe in luck is to believe that God does not exist...gambling and superstition go hand in hand" (page 67). · "Mark Twain shrewdly observed that `the best throw at the dice is to throw them away'" (page 75). · "Everyone looses at gambling- except the game owners" (page 95). Rogers defines gambling terms like "the chase", "plunging", "the rush", and many more. He discusses the "gambler's fallacy", "suicide without death", and "the disease" concept for gambling addiction. Allowing readers to draw their own conclusions the author adroitly challenges everyone to rethink gambling's easy access into our society. He concludes that changing attitudes about it is best for combating gambling. His is a call for a revision in gambling mentality. Perhaps a downside of this book is Rogers' continuing redundancy. Facts and figures are frequently repeated. This is attributable to the author's determined endemic intervention (the more he says it, the better we will remember it) and does not distract from the text. This book is recommended to everyone.

The history of gambling in America and observes its present-day impact

Now in a newly revised and updated edition, Gambling: Don't Bet On It is Cornerstone University President Rex Rogers' response to the shifts in modern American culture that celebrate legalized gambling more than ever. Gambling: Don't Bet On It examines the history of gambling in America and observes its present-day impact, including the money it siphons from individuals and households, moral and economic arguments against it, "harmless" forms of gambling such as the office pool, gambling demographics, negative impacts it has on modern culture, and more. Though the religious dimension of gambling as a sin is examined, Gambling: Don't Bet On It is not primarily a Christian book, but rather a social issues book sounding a crucial wake-up call to gambling's harmful effects. Extensively researched and persuasively argued in terms accessible to lay readers, Gambling: Don't Bet On It makes a singularly powerful and compelling argument.