Appearing in Newspapers, Magazines & Online

Gambling with America’s Health?
The public health costs of legal gambling
by Elaine Meyer
Sep 10, 2014

The harmful – even deadly – effects of casino gambling
by Amy Ziettlow
The Tampa Tribune
Feb 23, 2014

Bishop Confronts Casinos
by J. Scott Jackson
The Living Church
Jan. 23, 2014

A Desperate Gamble: More older Americans are problem gamblers & many have lost their retirement nest eggs
by Peter Jaret
AARP Bulletin
Jan/Feb 2014

Pay No Attention to Money-Losing Casinos. Let’s Build More Casinos
by Brad Tuttle
TIME
Jan. 31, 2014

Why Casinos are like Landfills
by Jon Marcus
TIME
Dec. 23, 2013

Realtors: Western Massachusetts casino would hurt home values in host community
by Jim Kinney
The Republican
Jul 2, 2013

Study: More casinos, more gambling addicts
by Eric Peterson
Daily Herald
Aug 7, 2011

States Face Drop in Gambling Revenues
by Ian Urbina
New York Times
Sep 9, 2009

Glitzy video slots seen as particular addiction risk
by Carey Goldberg
The Boston Globe
March 7, 2009

Meet Your New Neighbor: How slot machines are secretly designed to seduce and destroy you, and how the government is in on it.
By Isaiah Thompson
Philadelphia City Paper
January 7, 2009

Gambling with Nature: The environmental effects of mega-casinos
Audubon Society Sanctuary Magazine
Winter 2008-2009

Beware: 'Machine Zone' Ahead
by Natasha Dow Schüll
Washington Post
July 6, 2008

Rural Casinos Leave a Huge Carbon Footprint
by George Bachrach,president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts
and Philip Warburg, president of the Conservation Law Foundation
Boston Globe
February 11, 2008

The Big Blind: Why the argument for casinos in Massachusetts ain't nothing but a mathquerade
By Julia Reischel & Paul McMorrow
The Weekly Dig
September 2007

Betting the Farm
by Sean Murphy
Commonwealth Magazine
Fall 2007

Your brain on gambling: Science shows how slot machines take over your mind
By Jonah Lehrer
The Boston Globe
August 19, 2007

• Written Testimony
• Document: Social Costs of Gambling

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll
Princeton University Press September 9, 2012
Addiction by Design takes readers into the intriguing world of machine gambling, an increasingly popular and absorbing form of play that blurs the line between human and machine, compulsion and control, risk and reward. Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, MIT anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the "machine zone," in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible--even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and "ambience management," player tracking and cash access systems--all designed to meet the market's desire for maximum "time on device." Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers' everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two.

Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen
by Sandra Adell
EugeniaBooks February 11, 2010
A Wisconsin Professor takes an intimate look into problem and compulsive casino gambling and the impact the casino industry is having on vulnerable communities, especially poor and working class people, the disabled, communities of color, and women - the fastest growing population of problem gamblers in the United States. Adell' s narrative of gambling and loss unfolds against her history as an unwed and uneducated teen mother from Detroit who beat the odds stacked against her and went on to earn a Ph.D. and a coveted position as a literature professor in a major Midwestern university. In a clear and unaffected prose style, Adell describes how she went from having no interest in gambling to risking everything she had worked for after playing the slots and winning a small jackpot. We watch as she struggles against the lure of the slots only to get seduced time and again until she finally spirals out of control and is forced to confront the demons that lay beneath the surface of her professional persona. Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen is as much a story of redemption as it is a critical examination of the casino gambling industry and the potential dangers of this new and high-tech form of entertainment.

UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING REPORT SERIES
Kindt, J.
William S. Hein & Co. 2002 - 2009
Three Volume Set: Titles in the series contain reprints of many important government documents and academic source materials relevant to gambling issues, divided topically. These books preserve documents in danger of being lost, particularly in their historical context; therefore, each document is preceded by a historical commentary. The reprinted documents are primarily substantive reference materials, especially those contributing to determinations of congressional intent as well as the motivations of federal/state decision makers. The front matter contains a preface, introduction, note on censorship by big gambling, and erudite executive summaries of both U.S. and American Indian gambling which list strategic determinations, problems, goals, background, trends and conditioning factors, and recommendations.

The Luck Business
Robert Goodman
Touchstone November 6, 1996
Goodman documents how this business, which generates more than $40 billion dollars a year in revenues, is also the cause of myriad economic and social problems for the very communities that have looked to it as a panacea. From Publishers Weekly: Americans legally gambled almost $400 billion in 1993, according to Goodman, who headed the United States Gambling Study of 1992-94. He asserts that the gambling industry produces no product and siphons off money not only from retail businesses but also from manufacturing. He claims that gambling interests have enlisted the support of governments by holding out false hopes to legislators and other officials eager to find new sources of income without raising taxes. These hopes convince voters that gambling is a major contributor to funds for the "four E's" - education, environment, the elderly and economic development - which, Goodman asserts, it is not. As governments seek to increase revenues, they have turned to "convenience gambling," installing slot machines in retail businesses, bars and restaurants. Believing it would be impractical to outlaw gambling altogether, Goodman (After the Planners) offers suggestions for a "rational gambling policy." But in answer to the question, does gambling as a strategy for economic development really work, he warns: don't bet on it.

Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino
Jeff Benedict
Perennial Books by Harper Books July 3, 2001
With compelling detail, Without Reservation tells the stunning story of the rise of the richest Indian tribe in history. In 1973, an old American Indian woman dies with nothing left of her tribe but a 214-acre tract of abandoned forest. It seems to be the end of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. But it is just the beginning. Over the next three decades, the reservation grows to nearly 2,000 acres, home to more than 600 people claiming to be tribal members. It has also become home to Foxwoods, the largest casino in the world, grossing more than $1 billion a year. Without Reservation reveals the mysterious roots of today's Pequot tribe, the racial tension that divides its members, and the Machiavellian internal power struggle over who will control the tribe's funds. Author Jeff Benedict brings to us the deal makers, the courtroom machinations, the trusts and betrayals. Now, with remarkable new information, the paperback brings us up-to-date on these revelations, which lead to state and federal investigations and calls for congressional hearings.

The Curse: Big-Time Gambling's Seduction of a Small New England Town - A Novel
Robert H. Steele
Levellers Press (2012)
During the 1990s, two Connecticut Indian tribes built the world's two biggest casinos in the southeastern corner of the state, resulting in what has been called a "gambling Chernobyl." The Curse is a novel set against those events. It begins in 1637 with the massacre of the Pequot Indians and a curse delivered by a Pequot sachem to the young English soldier who is about to kill him. The story then jumps 350 years as the soldier's thirteenth-generation descendant, Josh Williams, becomes embroiled in a battle to stop a new-minted Indian tribe from building a third casino that threatens his town and ancestral home. The lure of easy money drives everyone from the tribe's chief to a shadowy Miami billionaire, venal politicians, and Providence mobsters, while a small, quintessential New England town must choose between preserving its character or accepting an extraordinary proposal that will change it forever. Robert H. Steele is vice chairman of an international retail marketing agency and has been a director of numerous companies. A graduate of Amherst College and Columbia University, he served in the CIA and Congress, and was a candidate for governor of Connecticut. Recently, he has traveled throughout Massachusetts speaking at public forums about the Connecticut casino experience.