Timothy L. O'Brien

Major forms of legalized gambling-casinos, card rooms, state lotteries, horse betting, and video poker-have spread from the confines of Nevada and a handful of other states to every state in the union with the exception of Hawaii and Utah. The massive expansion of legalized gambling in the United States began in the mid—1970s as state governments capitalized on the public's growing tolerance and voracious appetite for games of chance.

Timothy L. O'Brien is a reporter for the New York Times and the author of Bad Bet: The Inside Story of the Glamour, Glitz, and Danger of America's Gambling Industry. The following excerpt from Bad Bet describes how gambling has become a ubiquitous pastime in America, attracting more of the public's recreation dollars than baseball, the movies, and Disneyland combined. The author contends that many of the negative impacts of gambling, from...