Literature Analysis #1: What's Luck Got to do With it?

Topics/Events
1A. The book I read is one that starts out by giving you a history of gambling. It continues off this point into explaining why people throughout time have gambled. After you have the basis of what gambling is and it's history, you learn about how mathematics is applied to gambling. When your understanding of the math behind gambling is high, you learn how to analyze situations and the probability of one thing happening over another.
1B. This book gives you an understanding of how gambling started, the mathematics involved in the process and how to best maximize your ability to win.

2. The author of this book decided to write on this subject because it truly interests him. When he took a statistics class in high school on this subject his teacher was very boring and he hated it. During his college years he met a professor who was very energetic and excited about the subject, this led to him enjoying the subject and pursuing a career in it.

3. I chose to read this book because it seemed like information that may be useful to me in the future and information that I will never forget. I also love history and after reading the first chapter, I knew I would enjoy the book.

4. This book seemed very realistic. As he traveled through time explaining gambling in ancient cultures and how it differed from today's gambling I felt like I was peering into an ancient casino 2000+ years ago. I have read articles and watched movies about people who were heavy gamblers and lost tons of money but never had I heard of people like this from ancient times. Well-off people could throw away money at these ancient casinos (who were mostly small houses/rooms). I could use these old tales of gamblers and relate them to those that I know in modern times.
People
1. There were tons of characters represented in this book that I know the author, or anyone alive today, had never met. This is where creativity in non-fiction writing plays a role. He wrote of the history of gamblers in a very understanding tone. He seemed to know how they felt about gambling and why they could lose fortunes on games that seemed so trivial. He also wrote of philosophers that discovered different theories involving probability. When he wrote of any of these people you could assume that he knew them personally. I think the author was one who did tons of research on his subjects prior to writing about them.

2. One woman, who upon inheriting money through the death of her husband, sneaked into a gambling house to play at one of the tables. She was a pretty young woman whose husband had died from a terrible accident, although at this time women were not allowed into the 'casinos'. She acted as if she were a male and even had some success playing with the "big dogs". This luck would not last forever as she began to lose ample amounts of her inheritance. She just could not stop and eventually all of her money was gone. Luckily for her, although tragic for her sister, another death ensued. The woman's sister died soon after all of her money was gone and, as the sole benefactor, more money came her way. She could just not stay away from those tables and as it happened before, she had great success. This success never lasts forever and again she gambled away all of her money. She began to borrow from the casino, and knowing she could not pay it back, she hanged herself. I would use direct characterization if she was a fictional character to easily let you know what kind of person she was. Another character in the book was a young eccentric scientist. His work and theories on probability were years before his time and went largely unrecognized. He worked his butt off for his short life but nobody seemed to care about his wacko ideas that mathematics was involved in gambling. He died at the ripe age of 34 and it took 200 more years for the world to recognize his ideas as the truth. Since he was a "wacko" scientist, I would use indirect characterization to help you get to know him by showing the crazy things that he thinks of throughout the day.

3. Both of these characters met a tragic death but what makes them interesting to write about is that people still have a reason to know who they are. The young woman is an extreme example of what may happen or have happened if you were an uncontrollable gambler. The young scientist is interesting to write about because he is a person, although not of importance during her lifetime, was important two centuries later. This is the same sort of thing you see today with authors and artists whose work of arts do not gain much recognition until after they are dead.
Style
1. The author used more of a journalistic style where he focused straight on the facts and explained how they related to the subject he was discussing. You have to understand that the part of this book with characters in it was largely based on historical figures. He used these historical figures and stories about these people to explain how gambling started and how it continued. Only a few of them had a story behind their hopes and desires.

2. When it comes to describing how a place or an area looked, the author would give lengthy and detailed descriptions. I think the author thought it was important to get you immersed in the historic areas that were described. Things are easier to understand when you have a mental picture of what you are reading about. People were described in a small amount of detail but there was always a deep reason why they were mentioned. A scientist or mathematician may have thought out an important equation or theory. A common citizen may have lost all of their money in a gambling house and the author would explain the game that they had been playing and the (likely) way that they lost it. These choices affect the book in a way that may be hard to understand. I think the way it is written is perfect for me. I am able to picture the gambling house and am able to at least see a silhouette of the person I am learning about. I can hear the commotion of the room and the happiness or sadness floating around the table. To me the book was easy to understand after being so immersed in the past.

3. The author uses his own views on the topic and the reasons that he wrote about it to set his enthusiastic tone towards what he was writing about. He explains his original dislike of the subject and his turnaround to be in love with it. This helps you to keep an open mind about what is being discussed even if you think it may be tedious at times.

4. I think the author must be a professor. Throughout the book he seems like a very inspired professor who wants you to learn the goodness of his favorite subject. I do not believe he wrote this book as a means of making money but as a way of informing the masses about the history and mathematics behind gambling. I don't exactly know how to explain why I feel the author wrote it this way it is just my interpretation of what I read.

5. He drops many names and provides you with a longing curiosity to find how who these people truly are. Since this book is non-fiction, the people described were real living people. Most of the ones described I was able to look up on the internet and read more about who they were. This gave me a deeper understanding of their motives.
Enduring Memory
There is no such thing as luck. No matter how many times you roll a dice, if you collect a big enough table of data, the percentages of the individual numbers you roll will even out. This means that no matter how "lucky" you are, eventually you will lose. Some people do not understand this concept and will end of losing their fortune. I will remember this forever as I venture into adulthood and have the ability to go gamble. I will know my limits and when I'm on a hot streak I will know that it cannot and will not last forever. I will also remember that everything we know of today that has to deal with the subject of mathematics was created by hardworking individuals in the past. Many of these people never got the praise that they deserved. I respect everything that people in the past have done as it has made life better and better for us. I can only hope to leave such an impression for future generations after I die. This book relates to my big question in a weird way: Why are we here? Why do we strive for success when in the end it seemingly does not matter? I am closer to understanding the answer after reading this text. This is strange as I did not expect to find part of the answer in a book about gambling.