The Reading Warehouse

This study of a unique social world probes beneath the thrill and spectacle of horse racing into the lives of the "honest boys," the "gyps," the "manipulators," the "stoops," and the "Chalk eaters"--the constituents of race track society and the players of the racing game. With scientific precision and journalistic vigor, Scott describes the everyday activities--the objectives and strategies--of those whose lives are organized around track proceedings and who compete with chance and one another.

The players in the racing game range from track owners to stable boys, from law enforcers to lawbreakers, and from casual sportsmen to pathologically addicted gamblers. Considering the self-interests, the normative and operational codes, and the interactional relationships among the major types and subtypes of participants, the author defines the components of strategic movement within the framework of rules and resources to show how a player's relations to the "means of production" governs his behavior.

The fruitful application of sociological theory and method to an unusually interesting social context makes this particularly useful still for courses in social problems and the sociology of organizations and of leisure.

Marvin B. Scott retired in 2001 as professor of sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York. He previously taught at San Francisco State College and received his Ph.D. in 1966 at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jaime Suchlicki, one of the leading scholars of Latin America, has taught Mexican and Cuban history for more than thirty years. Formerly executive director of the North-South Center at the University of Miami, he is now Bacardi Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies. He formerly edited the Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs and has had a number of advisory positions in public and private sectors. He is author of University Students and Revolution in Cuba and Cuba From Columbus to Castro.