Luck, Leisure, and the Casino in Nineteenth-Century Europe
A Cultural History of Gambling

Casino gambling is central to understanding the cultural, social, and intellectual history of nineteenth-century Europe.

Jared Poley (Author)

9781009393546, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 September 2023

220 pages
28 x 19 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

Gambling was central to the cultural, social, and intellectual history of nineteenth-century Europe. By tracing the evolution of gambling and investigating the spatial qualities of the casino, this book reveals how Europeans used gambling to understand their changing world. The development of resorts and the architectural qualities of casinos demonstrate how new leisure practices, combined with revolutions in transportation and communication, fashioned resort gambling in the Rhineland and Riviera. Jared Poley explores the importance of casino gambling in people's lives, probing how gambling and fate intersected. The casino impacted understandings of the body, excited emotions, and drove the 'psychology' of the gambler, as well as affecting ideas about probability, chance, and luck. Ultimately, this book addresses the fundamental question of what gambling was for, and how it opened up opportunities to understand theories about aggression, play, and human development.

Introduction
1. Gambling in the nineteenth century
2. Visiting the resort
3. Experiencing the casino
4. Probability and the casino
5. Chance and luck
6. Gambling and the body
7. Gambling and the history of emotions
8. The psychology of gambling
9. What gambling was
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: European history [HBJD]