By turns amusing and alarming.
An industry insider dissects the dire social consequences of America’s gaming culture.
Ugel worked in a particularly unsavory corner of the lottery business, a private, lump-sum company that offers winners a quick hit of cash if they sign over their annuities. As he points out, these are hardly the only sharks in the gambling ocean. Lotteries date to antiquity, and our founding fathers were all heavily involved in their implementation or promotion. Today, gambling is more pervasive and more acceptable than ever. More than half of all American adults play at least once a year, and teens think gambling for high stakes is perfectly normal. Canny lottery executives regularly introduce new, zippier and more addictive games. PR departments know that citizens like to hear about lotto proceeds going to state education, but the author reminds us that lottery money doesn’t increase a state’s actual expenditures on schools; it just allows legislatures to appropriate a smaller portion of the state budget to the three Rs. As for actually getting lucky and winning, his text backs up the old saw about folks being happier before they won. The newly rich are pursued by friends, relatives and sharp businesspeople out to take advantage of them. For many, lottery wins lead to lawsuits. One woman’s septuagenarian husband filed for divorce as soon as she hit the jackpot, successfully claiming he should get half the money, since she’d used his $20 to buy the ticket. A breezy, funny writer, Ugel made “multiple six figures” during his days in the industry, but most of it is now gone: “It’s as if I never had the money in the first place. I’m as jealous as you are.” He’s also pessimistic, short on suggestions of how Americans might challenge the lottery industry. Maybe this eye-opening book will galvanize a movement.
By turns amusing and alarming.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-128417-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Collins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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