Product Description
Louisiana is our most exotic state. It is religious and roguish, a place populated by Cajuns, Creoles, Rednecks, and Bible-thumpers. It is a state that loves good food, good music, and good times. Laissez les bons temps rouler — let the good times roll — is the unofficial motto. Louisiana is also excessively corrupt.
In the 1990s, it plunged headlong into legalized gambling, authorizing more games of chance than any other state. Leading the charge was Gover… More >>
Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards
I returned the book to Amazon.com because I thought the jacket cover had gotten wet during South Louisiana’s latest tropical depression. I was amazed to learn that the jacket cover is meant to appear faded and folded. I have not been able to ascertain why the publsher decided to do this. Can someone help?
Rating: 5 / 5
Taylor Bridges’ “Bad Bet on the Bayou” is a comprehensive account of how legal gambling (excuse me, “gaming”) came to pass in Louisiana and how it eventually led to the criminal conviction of the state’s populist ex-governor Edwin Edwards. The story is one of shady deals, sleazy politicians and outright bribery. Edwards was just one of many crooked characters who put their own interests ahead of the state’s. As a result, New Orleans received a white elephant land casino, the Mississippi River and other Louisiana waterways got riverboat casinos that never leave the docks and every bar, gas station and truck stop got a video poker machine. This was supposed to help cure the state’s financial woes, but it instead led to a spate of corruption and a whole host of social ills.
All of this sounds interesting and it is to a point. The problem with the book is that it is TOO comprensive to be a truly good read. Bridges spends a couple of hundred pages painstakingly recounting every aspect of the dealmaking that took place, far more than will hold the attention of most readers. Only in the book’s last hundred pages does he finally get to the Edward DeBartolo riverboat deal which was ultimately Governor Edwards’ downfall. Bridges provides a good perspective of the state’s long history with gambling, but his insistance of recounting the entire life history of just about every player slows his story down. Interestingly, he give the least amount of space to his least compelling argument; that of the people who become addicted to gambling. He recounts the stories of a few working class and middle class people who blew their life savings either on the poker machines or in the casinos. He lets stand without comment one woman’s ridiculous assertion that state of Louisina is to blame for her losing $100,000 on $2 video poker bets. Excuse me lady, but no one put a gun to your head and forced you to make those bets.
Overall, “Bad Bet on the Bayou” is a story that needed to be told as a warning to other municipalities enamored with the potential financial windfall of legalized gambling. Unfortunately, the book’s narrative is not as good as its subject.
Rating: 3 / 5
The author could not decide what his subject was: a) the corrupting effects of contemporary gambling in Louisiana; b) how gambling licenses were won there; or c) Edwards’ corrupt activities. Although I enjoyed many of its anecdotes, the book is structurally flawed and does not hang together. It also suffers from annoyingly redundant quotes.
Bridges undoubtedly could have written excellent 50-100 pp. pieces on each of the three subjects above, or he could have shortened them into very readable magazine pieces. But he has failed to turn these related topics into a cohesive whole.
Rating: 3 / 5
If you were asked to make up a Grisham type tale about politics and corruption I do not think it would rival the true story this book takes you through.
Rating: 5 / 5
“Vote for the crook. It’s important.” This was a bumper sticker seen around Louisiana at the time of the Edwards-Duke Election. It implores the electorate to vote for the three-time governor whose definition of an honest politician was one who stayed bought in order to beat the former Ku Klux Klan wizard.
Like this bumper sticker, the book is funny–the thievery was so inept and outrageous, yet sad because this stuff was really going on.
The author knows his stuff, and the subject area, Edwin Edwards and the rise of gambling in Louisiana is a great story. This book reads like a thriller.
Rating: 5 / 5