Something for Nothing (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: T. J. Jackson Lears
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: History
- Time of Work: From the American colonial period to 2003
- Setting: The United States
- Genres: Nonfiction, History
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Magic or magicians, Power, personal or social, Gambling, Card games, Money, Work or workers, Morality or morals, Games, Protestantism or Protestant churches, Luck or misfortune
- Locales: United States
Jackson Lears’s subject in Something for Nothing is gambling, not merely the pastime or even the obsession, but gambling as a cultural stance from which to view and engage with the cosmos. Lears mines a four-hundred-year-long vein of lore about luck in America, extracting historical nuggets glittering with myriad colorful and quintessentially American characters, including American Indian shamans, African American fortune-tellers, Mississippi riverboat gamblers, and Wall Street day traders, all exhibiting a faith in the roll of the dice or its equivalent that rivals and...
[The entire page is 2083 words long]
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