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Sign up todayMoney for Nothing
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Learn moreThis wry and funny memoir tells the story of America's addiction to gambling from an astonishing angle. At age twenty-six, broke and knee-deep in gambling debt, Ed Ugel serendipitously landed a job as a salesman for The Firm, a company that offered up-front cash to lottery winners in exchange for their gradually doled-out prize money. Ed made a lucrative living by taking advantage of lottery winners' weaknesses—weaknesses he knew all too well. As Ed saw the often hilarious, sometimes sad outcomes that occur when great wealth is dropped on ordinary people who rarely have the financial savvy to keep up with the lottery-winner lifestyle, he discovered that the American Dream looks a lot like a day at the casino. And like those lottery winners, Ed struggled to find a balance in his own life as his increasing success earned him a bigger and bigger salary.
Edward Ugel is a sales and marketing expert who spent his late twenties and early thirties working among the nation’s most infamous lottery winners and gamblers in the high-stakes lump sum industry. He writes for the Huffington Post and has also written for the New York Times and contributed to PRI’s This American Life.
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.
Reviews
“A colorfully written account by a self-proclaimed overweight, chain-smoking, Krispy Kreme doughnut-eating, fanatical gambler...You will lick your chops, eager to hear the sordid woes of winners gone broke from spending sprees.”
“Narrator Arthur Morey gives an exceptional interpretation of the author’s seductive writing. He connects equally well with the tension of the sales encounter, the ironies in the clients’ sad stories, and the ribald self-disclosure that make this exposé so entertaining.”
“Ugel’s natural showmanship makes for entertaining reading. He does little to pretty up his misdeeds…while delivering a well-deserved scathing indictment of the government-backed lottery system.”
“We all have much to learn from the author’s important perspective on the proliferation of gambling opportunities. Written in an informal, sometimes humorous manner, this book contains excellent information for library patrons.”
“A breezy, funny writer…By turns amusing and alarming.”
“This funny, eye-opening memoir explores the American mania for gambling and the dark side of hitting the jackpot.”
“Mr. Ugel’s roller-coaster ride makes for dizzying, sometimes harrowing reading. Confessional, un-self-protecting, and bitterly funny, it exposes the human failings of his customers, his colleagues, himself, in a personal memoir of greed and hope.”
“[A] sordid—and highly engaging—tale.”
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