Legal gambling, once little more than a tourist attraction in New Jersey and Nevada, spread throughout the United States in the early 1990s and today generates over $35 billion in yearly revenues. Under the sponsorship of state and local governments, gambling enterprises - lotteries, riverboats, and casinos - have been growing at an explosive rate, with casino revenues alone almost doubling in the last six years.

But as Robert Goodman shows in this compelling new book, the first authoritative and accessible account of the new gambling enterprises, this bonanza comes at a substantial cost. Drawing upon the results of the landmark United States Gambling Study (which he directed), as well as interviews with politicians, industry leaders, and experts, Goodman shows that the frantic bidding by states for gambling enterprises has failed to provide them with the new revenues and jobs they so desperately need.

On the contrary, The Luck Business shows that an increasing proportion of casino patrons consists not of out-of-state tourists, who ordinarily would also spend money on local restaurants, hotels, and shops, but of local residents, whose betting actually leaves them with less money to spend locally.

What the states and localities are stuck with are the horrendous costs of the new gambling enterprises as they try desperately to cope with the bankruptcies, broken families, and petty crime that a growing population of problem gamblers inevitably leaves in its wake.

Indeed, as state governments increasingly see themselves as promoters rather than regulators of gambling, they (together with the gambling industry, one of this country's most powerful lobbies) are actively fostering - through advertising campaigns directed at the financially vulnerable, through new legislation setting aside betting limits, and by other means - addictive gambling behavior.