Something for Nothing: Luck in America - Softcover

Lears, Jackson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142003875 ISBN 13: 9780142003879

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2004

Synopsis

Jackson Lears has won accolades for his skill in identifying the rich and unexpected layers of meaning beneath the familiar and mundane in our lives. Now, he challenges the conventional wisdom that the Protestant ethic of perseverance, industry, and disciplined achievement is what made America great. Turning to the deep, seldom acknowledged reverence for luck that runs through our entire history from colonial times to the early twenty-first century, Lears traces how luck, chance, and gambling have shaped and, at times, defined our national character.

About this title

About the Author:

Jackson Lears's previous books include No Place of Grace and Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. Lears is a Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University and the editor of the distinguished journal Raritan. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines.

From Publishers Weekly:

Public moralists cannot abide the obsessive gambler. They bemoan the disintegration of a solid work ethic and condemn the search for the quick buck, the belief that it's possible to get something for nothing. But Lears, a historian at Rutgers and editor of the journal Raritan, finds a much more complex issue at the heart of gambling in America, one that raises fundamental ethical, religious and philosophical questions that strike at the very core of our culture. He writes, "Debate about gambling reveals fundamental fault lines in American character, sharp tensions between an impulse toward risk and a zeal for control. Those tensions may be universal, but seldom have they been so sharply opposed as in the United States, where longings for a lucky strike have been counterbalanced by a secular Protestant Ethic that has questioned the very existence of luck." Lears offers a history of conflicting attitudes toward luck, beginning with early English settlers and continuing up to September 11, 2001. The book often reads like a course in Western Civilization, moving easily among the disciplines of religion, history, literature, art, economics, philosophy and science. And yet the vast assemblage of information becomes so overwhelming, it's easy to lose the book's primary thread; i.e., the ways that gambling, chance and luck have shaped American culture. Furthermore, the emphasis on men as the primary actors is too narrow; where are the women in this cultural history? Despite its flaws, however, this challenging, erudite and original book is a significant contribution to American cultural studies.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0142003875
• ISBN 13: 9780142003879
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 408