By Chance a Winner: the History of Lotteries

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972. 1st Edition. Octavo with warm brown cloth board and red and black pictorial jacket; 135 pages: illustrations; index; 24 cm Near fine copy with clean pages and tight binding; with small dampstain to spine; in near fine jacket; now in archival mylar. . Hardcover. ISBN: 039606499X

A history of lotteries in the United States from Colonial days to the present. Compares the contemporary state-run lotteries with foreign sweepstakes. "In recent years state governments have discovered the lottery as a revenue raising device.'Rediscovered' is a beter word, for the lottery has a long and colorful history in America. In the seventeenth century lottery tickets supported the Virginia Company's effort at colonization at Jamestown. George Washington conducted a private lottery. Thomas Jefferson petitioned the state legislature for a lottery to pay his debts. The Federal government sold lottery tickets to support Revolutionary troops, and the lottery has served since Civil War times to determine which men will be called into military service." --Jacket copy. Well-illustrated and researched.