Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Gambling
Cardsharping, said the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in 1950, “carries a greater stigma than the seduction of a friend’s wife.” Nevertheless, it has enjoyed a long, vigorous life. Here are two tools of the cheater’s trade.
Jacob’s Ladder Holdout
The H. T. Webster cartoon comes from Webster’s Poker Book, published in 1925, when the game was enjoying one of its more vigorous revivals. In his text, which is nearly as amusing as Webster’s cartoons, the writer George F.
What one game of cards tells us about two famous statesmen
Poker (or its equivalent) has been popular among the political classes right from the beginning of American history.
The very American career of the card game you can learn in 10 minutes and work on for the rest of your life
During the golden age of golf, many of the sport’s greatest players never went pro. They couldn’t afford the pay cut.
From its first boom during America’s biggest gold rush to its current gamble on gambling, Deadwood, South Dakota, has managed to keep itself very much alive.
After 20 years of looking for someone who could perform the “middle deal,” Dai Vernon had pretty much decided that this supreme piece of sleight of hand was a fable. Then, one night in a Wichita jail, a prisoner told Vernon he’d seen a man do it…
Once seen as a vice and now as a public panacea, the national passion that got Thomas Jefferson in trouble has been expanding for two centuries.
“I’m dad-gum disgusted at trying to police every half-square and every half-house,” Senator Huey Long told a radio audience in Louisiana in May 1935. “You can’t close gambling nowhere where the people want to gamble.”
Running the long-lived Louisiana Lottery was as certain a moneymaker as owning the mint.
The Victorians regarded their times, quite correctly, as a great age of reform. They abolished slavery. They spread public education throughout the country. They began the march down the road to women’s rights.
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