Lotteries in Colonial America, Neal E. Milliken, (Routledge, New York and Abingdon, 2011) hardback, xiii, 124pp., £80.00, ISBN 978 0 415 88656 7

This is an addition to the series Studies in American Popular History and Culture, with eight black and white illustrations.

Customarily winners of lotteries sharer their ill-gotten gains with families.  This applied to the winner of the English State Lottery (£10,000) in 1772 and the renowned win of $170 million in 2002

Unusually, South Carolina established an educational Lottery in 2001 to raise funds for ‘educational expenses and scholarships' and stipulated that the net proceeds should supplement, not supplant existing resources for education.  Lotteries in America have provided important resources for three centuries as they did in England.  The research embodied in this book is primarily based on lottery advertisements in colonial American newspapers and broadsides but also include the records of the Virginia Company and U.S. sources such as Thomas Jefferson's Thoughts on Lotteries of 1826.

There are full end-notes and a differentiated bibliography and a useful index.  Even for an academic book of specialist appeal the price seems steep but it is a competent study of a neglected subject.