for a dollar and a dream
State Lotteries in Modern America
By Jonathan D. Cohen
The first comprehensive history of America’s lottery obsession, For a Dollar and a Dream explores the proliferation and popularization of state lotteries and how players and policymakers alike got hooked on wishful dreams of an elusive jackpot.
Released September 2022
Every week, one in eight Americans place a bet on the dream of a life-changing lottery jackpot. Americans spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined.
The story of lotteries in the United States may seem straightforward: tickets are bought predominately by poor people driven by the wishful belief that they will overcome infinitesimal odds and secure lives of luxury.
The reality is more complicated. For a Dollar and a Dream shows how, in an era of surging inequality and stagnant upward mobility, millions of Americans turned to the lottery as their only chance at achieving the American Dream.
But gamblers were not the only ones who bet on betting. As voters revolted against higher taxes in the late twentieth century, states saw legalized gambling as a panacea, a way of generating a new source of revenue without cutting public services or raising taxes. Even as evidence emerged that lotteries only provided a small percentage of state revenue, states kept passing them, desperate for their longshot gamble to pay off.
Alongside stories of lottery winners and losers, For a Dollar and a Dream shows how gamblers have used prayer to help them win a jackpot, how states tried to pay for schools with scratch-off tickets, and how lottery advertising has targeted lower income and nonwhite communities.
“More than just a fascinating history of state lotteries, but a window into the nation’s hot mess of humanity: our tribal tendencies, social hierarchies, economic insecurities, political chicanery, religious delusions, aversion to taxation, and deeply held beliefs about work, fate, self-reliance, and deservedness of our fortunes, good or ill.”
—Michael Mechanic, author of Jackpot: How the Super-Wealthy Really Live, and How Their Wealth Harms Us All
“A powerful and incisive look into the lottery era in this country and how gambling is a reflection of its time. Jonathan D. Cohen reveals how state governments have gambled with the citizenry as they ‘bet on betting’ to avoid taxation. Most importantly he de-stigmatizes those people who play lotteries, showing that a quest to hit it big with winning tickets is a quest to achieve the American Dream by any means necessary. Luck is at the heart of lotteries, and we're lucky that Cohen decided to write this deeply researched and captivating book.”
—Bridgett M. Davis, author of The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers
“Excellent new book … [Cohen is] a fair and meticulous collector of data.”
—Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker
About Jonathan
Jonathan D. Cohen is a program officer at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is the co-editor of All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States and Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen. He received his PhD in history from the University of Virginia and his BA from McGill University.
