In Other Words
All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States
From the looks of the outdoor billboards and primetime television commercials, New Mexico has gone “all in” for legalized gambling. With Native American casinos dotting the interstates, along with licensed bingo halls, fraternal and veterans card clubs, and racetracks that offer slot play, there’s no shortage of places to put down a bet. (All of this action doesn’t even include New Mexico’s largest game of chance: the state-sanctioned lottery.) With political pressure to expand gambling options, and the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the ban on single-game sports betting — a change that could result in widespread legal bookmaking — New Mexicans are figuring they will soon be asked to scratch that itch as well.
While it’s growing easier by the day to find places to gamble, gaining a greater understanding of its history and impact on society can be a real challenge. To that end, All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States is a good place to start. Edited by Jonathan D. Cohen and David G. Schwartz, its 10 essays turn the tables on the traditional gambling narrative. Its broad focus on the history of gambling in the United States and its exploration of the complex conditions that led to the rise and surge of legalization provide a sage reminder that there is indeed no reward without risk.
No matter one’s position on the morality or common sense of legalizing various forms of gambling, after reading the collection, one is likely to come away with a sense that America is really only bringing into the open an activity that has thrived clandestinely for a long time. Whether keeping it in the shadows was better overall for society is an interesting question, but recent trends and current events indicate the country’s gambling hunger is insatiable.
Fans of the great American pastime — baseball, not blackjack — are sure to enjoy the essay by Seth S. Tannenbaum. “The Ever Watchful Eye of the Magnate: Policing and Ballpark Gambling in the Twentieth Century” is a detailed reminder that gambling on baseball extended far beyond the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. In fact, gambling was a part of life at the ballpark from the start.
Arguably the most informative essays are focused on the great Las Vegas promotion machine. In its first generation, Las Vegas grew and expanded from pariah roots in large part with the help of an endless stream of publicity and media relations that essentially changed the vocabulary of the press. Beginning as a remote oasis of legal vice in the 1930s, the Nevada city grew into an international center of pervasive American corruption. By 2018, legalized gambling — once a hotbed of organized crime — had transformed into a legitimate corporate oligarchy, spreading to 48 states that have legalized either casino gambling or a lottery. The “illegal vice of the Progressive Era would become a hallmark of corporate capitalism by the 1990s,” as the editors write.
Those looking forward will benefit from the editors’ own essays on state-sanctioned lotteries and the ever-widening universe of legalized casino play in the U.S. This “major economic and cultural phenomenon” may soon be “nearly ubiquitous as it expands onto the internet.” Approximately 70 percent of Americans regularly engage in some form of betting. To no surprise, lotteries are an awful bet, a costly joke played on the unsophisticated dreamer. And there are plenty of dreamers out there.
Those hoping for something far-reaching on the subject of Native American gaming from this volume may be disappointed. It’s a collection, not a comprehensive study. But Seema Kurup offers an insightful analysis of the spread of legalized gambling on tribal lands. While casino development has brought tangible economic benefits, they have often come with cultural costs. By using tribal sovereignty, they risk losing what makes them distinctive, observes Kurup, a professor of English at William Rainey Harper College. She is the author of Understanding
Louise Erdrich, a study of the novelist and poet who is also a member of North Dakota’s Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe Indians, about which Erdrich writes. Erdrich’s ethos informs and influences Kurup’s understanding of the impact of gambling culture on Indian culture. Shadowing Erdrich’s poignant perspective, Kurup agrees that “in order to preserve tribal values, Native Americans must pursue reservation gambling in the spirit of those values.”
Such thoughtfulness doesn’t seem to square with New Mexico’s tribal casinos, which seem far more reminiscent of those in the Nevada cities of Reno and Las Vegas than reflections of Native American spiritual values. But it is also true that those New Mexico parking lots are full of gamblers out for a good time. They come from down the street and across the region, and they come in droves.
The story of New Mexico gaming continues, and in many ways its history remains unwritten. Until it is, All In and other books like it will aid the understanding of those who are affected by the spread of casino culture. Historian Ann Fabian writes in the foreword, “as we learn from reading this collection of suggestive essays by historians and scholars of literature, religion, and media, we have only begun to explore the patterns from threads of politics, technology, economics, and culture that weave into histories of gambling.”