Wanta Bet?

Bob and Barbara Freeman

It's a self-published book about the pari-mutuel industry. Nine hundred ninety-nine of every thousand of you reading this can now skip to the next review. It would be pretty hard to find a book that better fits the definition of "vertical market."

Still, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend combing used bookstores, hitting library used book sales, keeping your browser set to bookfinder, whatever, if it were really good. However, "good" is not the word I'd use to describe *Wanta Bet?* I'd probably be willing to give it a little more leeway had it not been rife with grammatical errors (which, as usual, often show up in the form of "way too many commas per sentence"); it's somewhat obvious that the Freeman clan not only published the book, but edited it, as well. Casual fans of the history of the various forms of American pari-mutuel wagering (not only playing the horses, but also dog racing and jai-alai) might find some interesting tidbits of history here-- the pari-mutuel industry's technology has come a long, long way in the past quarter-century-- but that's about all. If you're an obsessive collector of books on the subject, hunt this one down, but it can otherwise be safely avoided.