Burt Dragin, a journalism professor and investigative reporter, writes about gambling because it"s what he knows best. In this wise, witty, and wonderful book, he traces his own gambling addiction back through past generations and looks at the national passion for games of chance from the early colonial times to today"s multibillion-dollar casino boom. Along the way, he shares not only intimate interviews with recovering problem gamblers, but also his firsthand experiences of winning-streak exhilaration, loser"s humiliation, and the inner struggle for freedom of tyrrany of the house edge.