Something for Nothing: Luck in America

by Jackson Lears

Jackson Lears has won accolades for his skill in identifying the rich and unexpected layers of meaning beneath the familiar and mundane in our lives. Now, he challenges the conventional wisdom that the Protestant ethic of perseverance, industry, and disciplined achievement is what made America great. Turning to the deep, seldom acknowledged reverence for luck that runs through our entire history from colonial times to the early twenty-first century, Lears traces how luck, chance, and gambling have shaped and, at times, defined our national character.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American, American History, Sociology

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[John David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jackson Lears’ “Something for Nothing” is an interesting and thought-provoking work written in the vein of social and cultural history, much like his “No Place of Grace,” now some thirty years old. It looks at a wide swath of subjects from gambling, the rise of the market, and various Native American and slave folk traditions related to chance and luck.

According to Lears, two contradictory forces have always been at the heart of American experience: that of the speculative confidence man who has his eye on “main chance rather than moral imperative” and the other which “exalts a disciplined self-made man whose success comes through the careful cultivation of Protestant values” (p. 3). He calls these two instincts the “culture of chance” and “culture of control” respectively. Even though the growth of Protestantism and especially Puritanism damaged a vernacular culture of luck (by trying to impose a Providential reason and rationality upon it, instead of allowing for the free flow of play embodied by Fortuna), the split between the elite idea that Providence was superior and the more popular, demotic idea of divination persisted throughout the culture. Lears looks at the cultural importations of African slaves and Indians that created complex social relations with whites. As John Greenleaf Whittier asked rhetorically in 1847 “Is it not strange that the desire to lift the great veil of the mystery before us should overcome, in some degree, our peculiar and most republican prejudice against color, and reconcile us to the necessity of looking at Futurity through a black medium?”

By the late eighteenth century, luck had become less providential and more secularized, and the idea that “misfortune fell upon the worthy as on the licentious” became more widespread. This is related to the American idea of secular reinvention, or as Martin Buber put it, “the grace of beginning again and ever again.” But as chance was secularized, it was simultaneously driven into the underbelly of society. There were gentlemen who took pride in their flirtation with luck for luck’s sake, while sharpers (that is, swindlers, gamblers, and confidence men) would cheat the game for a dollar. The bourgeois ethic of what Lears calls “evangelical rationality” demonized gambling, thereby giving rise to the “masculinity of moderation” and the domestication of gambling.

The last couple of chapters cover the increasing trends in Taylorism and bureaucratic rationality that Lears claims were always at odds with the cultural idioms of chance and fortune; still another covers how various thinkers, artists, and musicians used these ideas during the rise of Modernism. While Lears clearly roots on the side of chance for the entire book, he is intellectually honest enough to admit that neither side has definitely won a victory. In fact, our age, much like any other, might be ruled by the uneasy co-rule of both luck and control.

Lears is a superb historian and a professor at Rutgers who has gained considerable mastery over his sources; the body of scholarship that he draws from is impressive. However, the one major complaint I have about the book is that some of it is very repetitive: it seems like the idea of “luck versus control” pops up over and over again, sometimes with so little variation that it doesn’t really need recapitulation. This makes the first two-thirds of the book move very slowly, even though the last third picks up, though this may just have been because of the shift toward cultural toward a more narrow kind of intellectual history.

A note on my rating: for someone only passingly interested in this kind of history, I would only give it three stars; for someone with a less casual interest, I think it deserves another star. Most people will probably not enjoy this as beach reading; it’s not a popular history that the cover might have you think it is. However, if you’re interested in the topic, Lears handles it with a scholarly, thorough care that he has fostered throughout his career.

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

competent and straightforward humanities work, as Professor Lears draws upon literature and culture studies to discuss chance/hazard/luck in American life/identity. not quite as dynamic, strong, or spell-binding as the best humanities writing out there, but at least competent and intelligent, and draws upon a rich vein of reading and understanding. will review again, but for now 3/5

[Dan Gorman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent look at the ways that a pursuit of gambling, luck, and chance has contrasted with a pursuit of control or determinism. Lears notes that people might subscribe to both schools (e.g., going to church on Sunday and engaging in divination, magic, gambling, or get-rich-quick schemes on the side). My problems with the book are mainly methodological. Lears treats luck, chance, etc., as basically synonymous. He tends to reduce different cultures' magical objects and conceptions of chance to the same meanings. This "descriptive reductionism" is not something I care for. It's better to call things by their own names and recognize how distinct systems work. The book's message to make peace with the messiness of life is a welcome one, though.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something for Nothing: Luck in America (Hardcover)
by Jackson Lears
ILL
fascinating





Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France

[Joshu · Rating 2 out of 5]

not that informative and dreadfully boring. sounded like a cool multi-disciplinary work of pop scholarship, but it turned out to be poorly executed, in my estimation.

[Kim Horner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense. Agitating. Stimulating. Particularly illuminating if you distrust both religion and gambling.