The Restoration was a decade of experimentation: from the founding of the Royal Society for investigating the sciences to the startling role of credit and risk; from the shocking licentiousness of the court to failed attempts at religious tolerance. Negotiating all these, Charles II, the "slippery sovereign," laid odds and took chances, dissembling and manipulating his followers. The theaters may have been restored, but the king himself was the supreme actor. Yet while his grandeur, his court, and his colorful sex life were on display, his true intentions lay hidden. Charles II was thirty when he crossed the English Channel in fine May weather in 1660. His Restoration was greeted with maypoles and bonfires, as spring after the long years of Cromwell's rule. But there was no way to turn back, no way he could "restore" the old dispensation. Certainty had vanished. The divinity of kingship had ended with his father's beheading. "Honor" was now a word tossed around in duels. "Providence" could no longer be trusted. As the country was rocked by plague, fire, and war, people searched for new ideas by which to live. And exactly ten years after he arrived, Charles would again stand on the shore at Dover, this time placing the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin, Louis XIV of France. Jenny Uglow's previous biographies have won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and International PEN's Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. A Gambling Man is Uglow at her best: both a vivid portrait of Charles II that explores his elusive nature and a spirited evocation of a vibrant, violent, pulsing world on the brink of modernity.

Evoking the golden age of crime, and for fans of Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, comes the second book in the Private Investigator Archer series, A Gambling Man from one of the world’s bestselling thriller writers, David Baldacci. A lucky roll of the dice California, 1949. Aloysius Archer is on his way to start a new job with a renowned Private Investigator in Bay Town. Feeling lucky, he stops off at a casino in Reno, where he meets an aspiring actress, Liberty Callahan. Together, they head west on a journey filled with danger and surprises – because Archer isn’t the only one with a secretive past. A risk worth taking Arriving in a town rife with corruption, Archer is tasked with finding out who is doing everything they can to disrupt the appointment of a top official. Then two seemingly unconnected people are murdered at a burlesque club. In a tight-lipped community, Archer must dig deep to reveal the connection between the victims. All bets are off As the final perilous showdown unfurls, Archer will need all of his skills to decipher the truth from the lies and finally, to prove she’s a star in the making, will Liberty have her moment in the spotlight? A Gambling Man is the second historical crime novel in David Baldacci’s Private Investigator Archer series, following the Sunday Times top five bestseller One Good Deed.

A memoir of growing up in mob-run Sin City from a casino heir-turned-governor who's seen two sides of every coin When Bob Miller arrived in Las Vegas as a boy, it was a small, dusty city, a far cry from the glamorous, exciting place it is today. Driving the family car was his father Ross Miller, a tough guy—though a good family man—who had operated on both sides of the law on some of the meaner streets of industrial Chicago. The Miller family was as close and as warm as "Ozzie and Harriet," as long as you knew that Ozzie was a bookmaker and a business acquaintance of some very dubious criminal types. As Bob grew up, so did Vegas, now a "town" of some two million. Ross Miller became a respectable businessman and partner in a major casino, though he was still capable of settling a score with his fists. And Bob went on to law school, entering law enforcement and eventually becoming a popular governor of Nevada, holding office longer than anybody in the state's history. And the Miller family's legacy continues. Bob's own son is presently serving as Secretary of State. A warm family memoir, the story of a city heir, with just a little bit of The Godfather and Casino thrown in for spice, Son of a Gambling Man is a unique and thoroughly memorable story.

You got a choice. Hang as a horse thief or teach our schoolkids. That was the decision facing Mage Casebolt, a decision that made him wish he had never disembarked the riverboat at New Orleans.Bound for San Francisco to join his brothers in a gambling emporium, Mage s journey halts abruptly in Valley Springs when he is framed for horse stealing.The teaching job is unpleasant enough, but then a cholera epidemic quarantines the town, saddling him with an old freed slave, twelve boisterous schoolchildren who make a practice of running teachers out of town, and the local postmistress who detests the idea of a gambler playing the part of schoolmaster.Then the rustlers hit, and Mage faces the task of reining them in with his little contingent of misfits. He quickly realizes that mixing kids, guns, dynamite, and rattlesnakes can make life mighty exciting, and uncertain.

A collection of over 200 great Bluegrass, Old Time, Country and Gospel standards. Learn to play songs written and recorded by the giants of traditional American music: Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Doc Watson, and many more! Melodies are presented with a BASS LINE, lyrics and chords. the two CDs include recordings of EVERY song in the book!Also included: Valuable information on how to play bass plus step-by- step instruction on how to transpose any song to any key! We now have versions of the Parking Lot Picker's Songbook for every instrument in a typical bluegrass band - guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, dobro, and bass - so every member, no matter what instrument they play, can work from the same collection of songs!

Frontier Gambling: The Games, The Gamblers, and the Great Gambling Halls of the Old West is an entertaining look at one of the integral facets of the American West - gambling. Rich in detail and jargon, yet written in an easy to understand style, the book tells how the games were played, legitimately and otherwise; it provides sketches of some of the infamous gamblers and con men of the era; and it covers the notorious saloons and gambling houses where fortunes were wagered night and day in the untamed West.

Pathways to Excessive Gambling draws upon extensive empirical research amongst young people and problem gamblers in Australia, comparing it with situations in other territories, to shed light on social, recreational gambling and the ways in which this can lead to excessive gambling. It highlights the relationship between the local community, sports clubs, governments, social recreation, economy and regulation of gambling venues, identifying the social indicators that typify situations which commonly lead to excessive gambling. By developing a 'society-based' perspective, this volume recognizes problem gambling as an issue for the whole society rather than just the individual, focusing on the availability of gambling and identifying its capacity, as a construct, to encourage or restrict the behaviour of the individual. As such, this book will be of significance to social scientists with interests in gambling, young people, social problems, and the sociology of leisure and culture.