For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America

This first comprehensive history of America's lottery obsession explores the spread of state lotteries and how players and policymakers alike got hooked on wishful dreams of an elusive jackpot.Every week, one in eight Americans place a bet on the dream of a life-changing lottery jackpot. Americans spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined.The story of lotteries in the United States may seem straightforward: tickets are bought predominately by poor people driven by the wishful belief that they will overcome infinitesimal odds and secure lives of luxury. The reality is more complicated. For a Dollar and a Dream shows how, in an era of surging inequality and stagnant upward mobility, millions of Americans turned to the lottery as their only chance at achieving the American Dream. Gamblers were not the only ones who bet on betting. As voters revolted against higher taxes in the late twentieth century, states saw legalized gambling as a panacea, a way of generating a new source of revenue without cutting public services or raising taxes. Even as evidence emerged that lotteries only provided a small percentage of state revenue, and even as data mounted about their appeal to the poor, states kept passing them and kept adding new games, desperate for their longshot gamble to pay off. Alongside stories of lottery winners and losers, Jonathan Cohen shows how gamblers have used prayer to help them win a jackpot, how states tried to pay for schools with scratch-off tickets, and how lottery advertising has targeted lower income and nonwhite communities.For a Dollar and a Dream charts the untold history of the nation's lottery system, revealing how players and policymakers alike got hooked on hopes for a gambling windfall.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: An Astronomical Source of Income: The Return of State Lotteries Chapter 2: Not Luck, But the Work of God: Merit and Miracles in the 1970s Chapter 3: Rivers of Gold: The Lottery Industry and the Tax Revolt Chapter 4: Somebody's Gotta Win, Might as Well Be Me: Lottomania in the 1980s Chapter 5: This Could Be Your Ticket Out: The Paradox of Lottery Advertising Chapter 6: Selling Hope: Lottery Politics in the South Conclusion: Jackpot Notes Index

About the Author :
Jonathan D. Cohen is a program officer at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is the co-editor of All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States and Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen. He received his PhD in history from the University of Virginia. https://www.jonathandcohen.com

Review :
In addition to providing a chronological history of the spread of lotteries, this volume also examines the peculiar paradox of lottery advertising and the politics of lotteries in the South. All in all, this is a well-researched look at an enduring American phenomenon that, as a recent $2 billion Powerball jackpot demonstrated, seems to be here to stay. Cohen argues that the history of lotteries shows that the same conditions that spur players to spend large chunks of their often-meager incomes on lottery tickets hoping for a life-changing jackpot have also motivated states to legalize and promote lotteries....In addition to providing a chronological history of the spread of lotteries, this volume also examines the peculiar paradox of lottery advertising and the politics of lotteries in the South. All in all, this is a well-researched look at an enduring American phenomenon that, as a recent $2 billion Powerball jackpot demonstrated, seems to be here to stay. For A Dollar and a Dream is a powerful and incisive look into the lottery era in this country and how gambling is a reflection of its time. Jonathan D. Cohen reveals how state governments have gambled with the citizenry as they 'bet on betting' to avoid taxation. Most importantly he de-stigmatizes those people who play lotteries, showing that a quest to hit it big with winning tickets is a quest to achieve the American Dream by the only means available. Luck is at the heart of lotteries, and we're lucky that Cohen decided to write this deeply researched and captivating book. Into this wild decade of NFTs, SPACs, and cryptocurrencies, wherein America's meritocratic ethos is confronted by a casino's worth of speculative investment schemes, Jonathan Cohen delivers more than just a fascinating history of state lotteries, but a window into the nation's hot mess of humanity: our tribal tendencies, social hierarchies, economic insecurities, political chicanery, religious delusions, aversion to taxation, and deeply held beliefs about work, fate, self-reliance, and deservedness of our fortunes, good or ill. For a Dollar and a Dream pegs America's lottery fervor to the same societal forces that fueled the rise of prosperity gospel during the '60s and '70s. Games of chance and faith in the unknowable, as one source explains, are but two sides of the same coin, ways for humanity to deal with life's precarious prospects. With a fluid narrative that travels from the sidewalks of Newark and Chicago, to sunny California, to Bible Belt Georgia, this book allows us to understand the manner in which a complex and pernicious system of government lotteries has emerged. Cohen examines our sordid politics as well as our inner lives, shedding light on the dreamworld that lotteries have created in which American beliefs about wealth and religion have blurred into a confused synthesis. Widespread lottery participation has been at the center of American reaction to the emergence of glaring inequality in the late twentieth century. State governments have adopted an adverse position towards their citizens, and this book explains how this all came to be. For a Dollar and a Dream will be the reference for historical analysis of the gambling industry in the United States.