I am interested in Erdnase and hoped to find some words or passages in this book which would indicate that Erdnase also read it, and I did in a few places. But, all in all Anatomy of Gambling by Nimrod is not an interesting book. Probably written for a magazine at the time, in installments, it is very old British and includes very verbose wordage. While I like Erdnase's use of interesting words, here Nimrod goes overboard. He is basically explaining how bad gambling is for society, what with the loss of wealthy people's entire fortunes and estates, and suicides and duels fought because of losses from it, but he uses every word he can think of rather than get to the point. If one is looking for many many words to construct a simple thought, then this is the book for you.
While Erdnase, and under another pseudonym for himself, Eugene Edwards in the newspaper stories and book Jack Pots, as well as Maskelyne's and Houdin's books on gambling, show how words can be used in an interesting way, I found Nimrod to be overly loquacious and I found myself wondering if he was a lawyer expecting to be paid by the word.
While I'll probably finish it, I wanted to report how tedious a read it is.
