Fortune’s Merry Wheel

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Few people realize that legalized lottery had a prosperous career in the United States from colonial times throughout the 19th century. In 1892, for instance, the Louisiana Lottery could afford to offer $1,250,000 for its annual franchise. The lottery was the cradle of the brokerage system and of some of the big private banks; it impinged upon almost every phase of American life, economic, moral, and cultural. No other book has dealt conclusively with this development. John Ezell’s documentation, fascinating in its scope and detail, vividly portrays an institution which, although legally dead, is still a subject of practical political proposals today.