William Scholes (1814-1864), a cotton carder in one of the dark Satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution in England, won a workers’ lottery on New Year’s Day 1849. That fall, he and wife Ann Mills (1814-1875) and their children arrived in central Wisconsin with high hopes and few skills. In 37 chapters, The Lottery of Life follows the ancestral couple and their descendants among them teachers, telegraphers, engineers, homesteaders, active union members, farmers, inventors (from farm equipment to recycling fluorescent lights), an encyclopedia manager, and a world authority on glass.