Dr. Schwartz has written and edited several about gambling and history. Read about them here.
Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling. Casino Edition. Las Vegas: Winchester Books, 2013
This revised edition updates the original, expanding on its coverage of casinos and Las Vegas. With new chapters on Atlantic City, the 1980s recession and its consequences, and how casinos are faring in the current economic crisis, this book is essential for those who want to understand gambling.
There’s also an in-depth consideration of the role of organized crime in the development of Las Vegas casinos and the rise of online gaming. All that and more is why poker author Jim McManus has called it “even more indispensible than the original.”
Read more about Roll the Bones: Casino Edition here.
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Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling. First Edition. New York: Gotham, 2006
Spanning millennia, this award-winning book tracks the history of gambling from crude knucklebones to Internet poker. Fascinating personalities from gambling’s past and long-forgotten games spring from the pages of Roll the Bones.
If you enjoy gambling, you’ll be astounded by the fascinating story of how it has developed with humanity. Read it and learn why the Washington Post has called it “something remarkable,” why it won a 2006 Trippie Award, and why it’s a must-read for the fan of gambling.
Read more about Roll the Bones here.
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Cutting the Wire: Gambling Prohibition and the Internet. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005
At a time when online gaming is being debated, this is a very important book. It traces the past 200 years of anti-gambling legislation in the United States and examines the influences behind the passage of the Wire Act in 1961. This anti-gambling law is still used to stifle legal Internet gaming in the United States, and figures in current efforts to create a legal framework at the federal level.
With chapters on general American legal gambling history and Internet gaming, it puts the current debate over online gambling into perspective.
Read more about Cutting the Wire here.
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Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 2003
Developed from Schwartz’s doctoral dissertation in history, this book looks at the forces that shaped the rise of the commercial casino industry in the United States. Its thesis, that the self-contained nature of casino resorts renders them inherently anti-urban, raises profound questions for the use of casinos as urban redevelopment tools.
This book helps to explain why casinos evolved as they did, becoming the driving force behind the growth of Las Vegas in the late 20th century.
Read more about Suburban Xanadu here.
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The eight essays in Gambling, Space, and Time use a global and interdisciplinary approach to examine two significant areas of gambling studies that have not been widely explored—the ever-changing boundaries that divide and organize gambling spaces, and the cultures, perceptions, and emotions related to gambling. The contributors represent a variety of disciplines: history, geography, sociology, anthropology, political science, and law.
Purchase Gambling, Space and Time here.
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