Product Overview
The global economic crisis deepens by the day, yet the gambling industry continues to rake in enormous profits as people everywhere pump billions of dollars into slot machines in the hope of winning the ever elusive jackpot. Sandra Adell' s Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen offers an intimate look into problem and compulsive casino gambling and the impact the casino industry is having on vulnerable communities, especially poor and working class people, the disabled, communities of color, and women the fastest growing population of problem gamblers in the United States. Adell' s narrative of gambling and loss unfolds against her history as an unwed and uneducated teen mother from Detroit who beat the odds stacked against her and went on to earn a Ph.D. and a coveted position as a literature professor in a major Midwestern university. In a clear and unaffected prose style, Adell describes how she went from having no interest in gambling to risking everything she had worked for after playing the slots and winning a small jackpot. We watch as she struggles against the lure of the slots only to get seduced time and again until she finally spirals out of control and is forced to confront the demons that lay beneath the surface of her professional persona. Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen is as much a story of redemption as it is a critical examination of the casino gambling industry and the potential dangers of this new and high-tech form of entertainment.
