Books: Legerdemain & Quick Gun

PLAY THE DEVIL: A HISTORY OF GAMBLING IN THE U.S. (475 pp.)—Henry Chafetz—Clarkson N. Potter ($7.50).

With the dependability of a two-faced coin or a doctored roulette wheel, Americans each year lose between $20 billion and $30 billion on gambling—but they never lose interest. The lure of winnings without work is so powerful that neither moral censure, nor restrictive legislation, nor the tears of race-track widows—let alone mere losses—has ever been able to dampen it. Gambling has bred crime and corruption; it has also financed wars, built schools and churches, and, on Wall...