An Unsafe Bet? The Dangerous Rise of Gambling and the Debate We Should Be Having reveals how gambling represents a danger to public health due to its inherent addiction potential, which is being intentionally downplayed by the gambling industry and governments. Lays bare the extent of gambling and its effects on society Exposes the dilemma for policy makers, who are charged with protecting public health but also increasingly dependent on revenues earned from gambling Written by Jim Orford, an internationally respected authority on the topic International examples broaden the argument and reveal the global stakes involved

"Bad Bets" exposes the false promise of economic revival that has lured communities to depend on gambling for jobs and for a fiscal fix, and the criminal connections of many of its leading companies.

Louisiana is our most exotic state. It is religious and roguish, a place populated by Cajuns, Creoles, Rednecks, and Bible-thumpers. It is a state that loves good food, good music, and good times. Laissez les bons temps rouler -- let the good times roll -- is the unofficial motto. Louisiana is also excessively corrupt. In the 1990s, it plunged headlong into legalized gambling, authorizing more games of chance than any other state. Leading the charge was Governor Edwin Edwards, who for years had flaunted his fondness for cold cash and high-stakes gambling, and who had used his razor-sharp mind and catlike reflexes to stay one step ahead of the law. Gambling, Edwin Edwards, and Louisiana's political culture would prove to be a combustible mix. Bad Bet on the Bayou tells the story of what happened when the most corrupt industry came to our most corrupt state. It is a sweeping morality tale about commerce, politics, and what happens when the law catches up to our most basic human desires and frailties.

Mathew Carver is a Kentucky bloodstock breeder. The reader is immersed in the world of racing: the bloodstock sales at Newmarket; countryside of Normandy; Bluegrass of Kentucky; and mansions of Virginia. Racing’s aristocracy and its hard men, the touts, fraudsters, stable lads, tipsters and jockeys all provide action with many sub-plots.

A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Contents: Introduction The Last American Frontier – History of the 'Far West', of the Pioneers & Trailblazers Story of the Cowboy Story of the Outlaw Novels & Stories Riders of the Purple Sage Saga (Zane Grey) Ohio River Trilogy Dan Barry Series (Max Brand) The Virginian (Owen Wister) Lin McLean Leatherstocking Series (James F. Cooper) Flying U Series (B. M. Bower) Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) Bucky O'Connor (William M. Raine) Breckinridge Elkins Series (Robert E. Howard) In a Hollow of the Hills (Bret Harte) Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) Gold Hunters Last of the Plainsmen Border Legion Smoke Bellew Country Beyond Lone Star Ranger Ronicky Doone Trilogy Riders of the Silences Three Partners Man of the Forest Lure of the Dim Trails Tennessee's Partner Covered Wagon (Emerson Hough) Luck of Roaring Camp Rustlers of Pecos County Pike Bearfield Series Hopalong Cassidy (Clarence E. Mulford) O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Roughing It (Mark Twain) Outcasts of Poker Flat Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) Ungava (R.M. Ballantyne) Valley of Silent Men Black Jack Bull Hunter "Drag" Harlan (Charles Alden Seltzer) Wyoming: A Story of the Outdoor West Sheriff's Son Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) Boss of the Lazy Y Trail Horde Rider of Golden Bar (William P. White) Buck Peters, Ranchman Tangled Trail Golden Dream (Ballantyne) Gun-Brand (James B. Hendryx) Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) Long Shadow Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) Where the Trail Divides Iron Trail (Rex Beach) Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge)...