A "must read" for any truly serious student of modern America! This book is an entertaining, brilliant analysis of the history, structure, and performance of an industry that affects every American. Although the editor should be criticized for the misleading subtitle, Mr. O'Brien's treatment of the subject is faultless, and represents a major contribution to the public debate on gambling. It is the best treatment available, and should be read by legislators, policy-makers, and academics. Indeed, the so-called "gaming industry" should view the book as a "wake-up call", lest it find itself subjected to the treatment recently recieved by Big Tobacco.

Mr. O'Brien does not moralize, although he has clear opinions. The book is well balanced, and presents a history and description of the industry that is entertaining and insightful. It is a great gift book for any gambler, government student, or public official on your holiday gift list.

Tim O'Brien has written a can't-put-it-down book. I read a lot -- two or three books a week -- but rarely buy books (to be quite honest) because cash is usually short. But after flipping through "Bad Bet" at the bookstore for just five minutes I found myself at the cash register ponying up the entrance fee for the most fascinating read I've had this year. O'Brien has written the book I thought nobody ever would: Through deft and often hypnotic story telling, he takes us on an almost magical tour of the gambling world, with all its colorful characters, from weird to pathetic to greedy to swashbuckling. It is obvious he has done his research; the tone is authoritative throughout. But he doesn't pile on detail; he weaves it into his narrative. And that is the key word: narrative. Too many books bore you to death with their expertise; "Bad Bet" is simply a terrific tale, or rather collection of tales, held together with a strong point of view that nevertheless recognizes the many nuances of the gambling phenomenon. Thank God, it is never preachy; indeed, the only thing I question about the book is the title, as it honestly explores the positive side of gambling. Anyhow, I give this book five stars, the only one I've read in many a moon to rank that many.

Mr. O'Brien has written a thought-provoking book, the thesis of which is that casinos rely on a small percentage of problem gamblers for most of their profits. I was a little surprised that he didn't interview Frank Scoblete, the top gaming author in the world and my personal favorite because I would have liked to read Scoblete's opinions on O'Brien's thesis. But that is a minor quibble. The book is definitely worth reading. I tend to agree with O'Brien. Too many people are out of control when it comes to gambling.

There is a lot of good information in this book, but as an earlier review said, it is far too rambling and quite frankly poorly edited.

Take this example from p. 265:

"You can base a recordset on a SQL string only when creating recordsets based on a database object (as opposed to other uses of OpenRecordset, which can be based on tables, queries, or other recordsets). Attempting to do so will get you a run-time error."

OK, hold on here. First, aren't tables and queries database objects? And what's with "Attempting to do so will get you a run-time error"? They just told us we CAN do this in the previous sentence.

I know, I know, if you're familiar enough with the topic you can decipher all this gibberish, but a reader shouldn't have to do that. That why we turn to these books, to make things clearer, not muddier.

Much of the book suffers from these spaghetti-like paragraphs and bad editing.

A rambling style keeps this book from getting my highest praise; otherwise, I find the material to be clearly explained and "step-by-step" enough to facilitate do-it-yourself work

I had one evening to learn what Data Access Objects were and implement them in a project I was working on. I had tried previously to learn about them unsuccessfully. This book was my last chance. The information clicked for me. It took me no time at all to bang out the code I needed. Understanding higher level material is not easy. One author's way of writing may not make sense to you while another author's explanation will. This books works for me.