Six to Five Against: A Gambler's Odyssey

In profiling dapper, extravagant, self-destructive and desperate gambling addicts, journalism professor Dragin writes a sympathetic saga to the powerless rather than an indictment of a sick society. The world of the addict is a sleazy and romantic one dominated by big wins and bigger losses with a fantastic lexicon of its own (A juice joint is a ""house that uses electricity to control magnetized dice""; a cheese-eater informs on a cheating player), but instead of concentrating on the thrill of picking the winning horse or glorifying the high of a lucky roll at a craps table, Dragin wants to help people, an admirable goal, but one that makes for a confused read. Awkwardly crammed into this slim volume are a trove of statistics (in 2001, Americans spent more at the casinos than at the movies), interviews with gambling addiction counselors (Dragin's investigation of ""the psychological need for suffusing oneself in risk"" yields familiar testimonials like ""winning money in a casino is really an attempt to alleviate the bankruptcy of the soul"") and bite-sized profiles of gambling addicts that are too short to pack redemptive wallops. Meanwhile, Dragin's retelling of his father's gambling odyssey seems more like myth-making than a cautionary tale. Though Dragin's goal of helping addicts see the way is admirable, he doesn't seem to know where to shine the light.