ON AUGUST 30, with the flood waters rising in New Orleans, Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman appeared on CNN to reassure a battered nation. “We hope to work with Gov. Barbour in Mississippi in particular to get at least temporary casinos open as quickly as possible and get everybody back to work,” he said. When the chips were down, our gaming industry stood fast, ready to do whatever it took to keep America betting. Is this a great country or what?

Over the past 50 years, gambling has gone from sin to vice to guilty pleasure and has come, finally, to be simply another point of interest on the entertainment map. Today America has 445 commercial casinos and 411 Indian casinos acting as beacons to the lucky. In 1993, 11.6 million Americans visited commercial casinos; in 2004, 54.1 million–26 percent of all gaming-aged adults–hit the tables and slots. In 1993, commercial casinos had $11.2 billion in gross gambling revenue; by 2004 that number had risen to $27 billion. But even this staggering figure–last year Hollywood grossed only $10.2 billion at the box office and $25.95 billion from home video–is just one piece of the gaming pie. Throw in the Indian casinos, state lotteries and horse tracks and you get a gross total of $72.87 billion–before you count Internet gaming.