From TV programs such as Wheel of Fortune to daily point spreads in newspaper sports pages, the gambling spirit is everywhere in American life. Casinos have spread beyond tawdry, out-of-the-way locations such as Las Vegas to Indian reservations and cities across the country. Riverboats, with their poker machines and blackjack tables, ply the nation's great rivers again, as their predecessors did over a century ago. The gambling and casino boom has breached even the citadel of middle-class respectability in the form of hotels such as Las Vegas' Circus Circus and Treasure Island, featuring "family" entertainment within yards of slot machines. Variously blamed on de-industrialization, a decline in the American work ethic, and a lapse in moral values, gambling's something-for-nothing mentality has become an important part of the American consciousness. Long a refined diversion for the wealthy and a desperate last chance for the poor, it is perhaps only...