Customer Reviews

Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise and Fall of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fate of Governor Edwin Edwards

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was born, and raised in Louisiana. I had to take Louisiana history in junior high school. It was a waste of time, because it taught about Thomas Jefferson, Napolean, Bienville, spanish-french archetecture, Iberville, etc. Two books that are a must read if you want to know anything about Louisiana: "Just Taking Orders", and "Bad Bet on the Bayou".

If you've ever wondered how things happen behind the scenes this book transports you to the highways and byways of the murky political landscape. Bridges has crafted a top notch replay of the high stakes sweepstakes that became gambling in Louisiana. A must read for anyone interested in politics, business and gambling.

Even for close followers of the Louisiana political landscape, things can get highly confusing with the favoritism, kick backs, back room deals, bribes, and bizzare family and professional political relationships. Throw in Edwin Edwards, David Duke, Edddie Debartalo and a rogues gallery of legislators, judges, the Mafia and some casino executives and we are left with a titantic mess in Louisiana. Happily this book sorts it all out, leaving us with the very unpretty picture of what happened in Louisiana over the last decade. It tells the story of the rise of legalizing gambling in Louisiana and the resultent social, economic and political disasters that followed. Bridges makes a powerful case for political reform and writes with a languid style reminisisent of a slow moving bayou. A bit too much repetitive text (I said "I read that already" a few two many times) but overall a masterful work.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink. -Earl Long, brother of Huey Long and himself a Governor of Louisiana

From a distance, it has seemed like Edwin Edwards was either the Governor of Louisiana or on trial for corruption, or possibly both at the same time, for nearly all of the past twenty five years. Tyler Bridges, a former reporter for the Times-Picayune, who covered the successful efforts to legalize gambling there in the 1990s, has written a thorough account of that struggle and of the political career of the extraordinarily colorful and resilient Edwards. In particular, he focusses on the fault line where the two stories came together, and how the slippery and seemingly invincible Governor was finally brought down by his eager and quite lucrative involvement in the rampant corruption surrounding the gambling industry.

In so doing, Bridges handles a welter of really labyrinthine information quite adeptly, wringing out of it a narrative that is relatively easy to follow (though sometimes, quite annoyingly, repetitious). The tale is replete with shady Southern con men, mobsters, pols on the take, and features cameo appearances by well known scoundrels such as David Duke, Eddie DeBartolo, and Bill Clinton. In the final section, as the FBI and Federal prosecutors close in on Edwards and bring him to trial, there is genuine drama : will he slip off the hook yet again, or has the barb finally been set deep enough ? And as many states face the question of whether to rely increasingly on gambling revenues, instead of taxes, there's a real object lesson in the dangers they face.

For all of that, there's something strangely missing from the story : there's no tragic arc to it. In that greatest of all political novels, All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren used the story of Huey Long and the miasmic Louisiana setting to explore the tragedy of how essentially decent men could be corrupted by the exercise of political power, the allure of easy money, and, most importantly, the self-assurance that even while doing well themselves they were doing good for others. There is no moment, let alone a period, in the career of Edwin Edwards where he seems to have been genuinely concerned with trying to help the core of poor constituents, many of them black, who made up his base of power. Nor do his voters appear to have harbored any illusions that he was truly on their side. Bridges conveys a real sense that Edwards appeal lay almost entirely in his personal charm and the natural attraction folks feel toward a charming rogue. As a result, there are no intimations of tragedy here, neither that Edwards is a good man whose faults brought him down, nor that this was a case where deserving supporters had their justifiable hopes betrayed. Edwards was a crook. Everyone knew he was a crook. He did little or nothing to improve the lives of average Louisianans. They voted for him anyway. It's awfully hard to avoid the feeling that he and they got exactly what they deserved.

The journalism is, for the most part, excellent--clear, concise, and well paced--and the book is filled with amusing scenes. The portrait Bridges paints of the effects of gambling on at least this one state is truly devastating. On the other hand, one wishes that an editor had excised some of the needlessly repetitious material and it's too bad that Edwards was not as tragic a figure as he was comic. But these things do weaken what is otherwise quite a good book.

GRADE : B-

This book is excellent because it is supported by hard evidence of Louisian-style corruption.. For example, the author reports that former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, Eddie Jordan, had a videotape of Gov. Edwards delivering a $20,000 bribe to former U.S. Representative Cleo Fields (D LA). Over the objection of his staff, Jordan declined to prosecute Fields or Edwards because , in his opinion, the evidence was insufficient. The Clinton Justice Department did not overrule Jordan's decision. How much more evidence did Jordan need? The real reason that Jordan decl;ined prosecution is that Fields and U.S. Representative William Jefferson (D LA) were both members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Jefferson and Jordan worked together in the same law office. Jordan could not prosecute his enemy, Edwards. without prosecuting his friend, Fields. The bitter irony of Edwards' criminal activity is that the U.S. Court of Appeals will probably reverse his conviction on legitimate grounds. Both the prosecutors and the trial judge overreached by dismissing during jury deliberations the only juror who was voting for acquittal and by ministrepreting the RICO statute. In any event, the question remains: why did "60 Minutes", "20/20", and "Prime Time" fail to cover the Fields bribery case? Dan , Tom and Sam, "What's the answer?"

I got this book for my husband, as he's the non-fiction reader in our family. I was out of something to read, so I picked it up and could NOT put it down.

Bridges does a great job of putting a lot of convoluted information into readable form. Edwin Edwards and his Crazy Cajun Cronies didn't really do anything new...they just continued a long tradition of crooked Louisiana Politics!

I enjoyed almost all of this book...the only parts that made my eyes glaze over were the details regarding the financing. My mind just can't wrap around deals where the broker stands to make 27 MILLION dollars....and then one million a year after that!

If you ever wanted a peek into the world of slick politicians, oily gangsters and brash billionaires, this is your book. BAD BET ON THE BAYOU should be required reading for anyone who votes!

Enjoy!

You go to Louisiana for the food, Mardi Gras, or jazz; you do not look to Louisiana for political ethics. Edwin Edwards, a man of intelligence and wit, was elected four times as governor. He could have been the state's best governor (although that might be damning with faint praise), but he turned out to be at least among its worst. His tragedy was inextricably linked with personal and corporate gambling, and it is told with all the fascination of a mystery novel in _Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards_ (Farrar Straus and Giroux) by Tyler Bridges. It is a memorable account of the worst in politics.

Louisiana had had sometimes scandalous connections to gambling long before it became a state, but overt gambling had been suppressed, especially in the seventies with the oil boom. When the boom went bust in the nineties, there was a scramble to boost state coffers, and especially those of New Orleans, and Edwards was determined that gambling would boost construction, increase employment, and bring money in from out of state. It looked unseemly for someone with an obvious love of gambling to get on the casino bandwagon, but Edwards was never regarded as a beacon of moral purity. When he ran against Klansman David Duke in 1991, bumper stickers read, "Vote for the Crook. It's Important," and Louisianans did so overwhelmingly. The first two-thirds of _Bad Bet_ tells in amazing detail the ins and outs of the corrupt means by which gambling was brought to the rivers of Louisiana and specifically to the French Quarter. But it is in the spellbinding final third that the book takes off, showing how the FBI brought Edwards down. The Harrah's casino went bust in 1995, when Edwards went into official retirement, but he kept busy with his usual money ploys and influence. The FBI started investigating the bribes that had been paid to get a juvenile prison built, and found that Edwards had gotten the money. Rather exciting descriptions ensue of FBI informants wearing wires to talk with Edwards, and of the difficulties of installing microphones and cameras in the former governor's office. Edwards was approaching seventy, he had a wife almost four decades younger, and he was for the first time in his life starting to take it easy. Unfortunately for him, he also let his guard down, allowing an informant to get him talking. The years of payoffs when he was promoting gambling were to come back on him, resulting in convictions on extortion and money-laundering, among other crimes, and probably federal prison for what remains of his life.

The tragedy of Edwards is shown by his enormous political skill run amok. The book gives examples of deal making that he arranged that would have been excellent politics, if the deals had not been crooked. He had an ability to read people and meet their needs that could have well served his constituents. He knew how to make fun of himself, and the many funny jokes reported here were just the thing to delight reporters and voters. His talents instead went to enriching himself and his cronies, gambling, and stringing along a line of mistresses. What a waste.

As a writer of fiction, NOTHIN' LEFT TO LOSE, Summerhouse Press 1999, I am always pleasantly surprised when I find non-fiction books that carry me along with the interest and appreciation of good writing that I find in exceptional novels. Tyler Bridges has achieved this in BAD BET ON THE BAYOU. Having been involved in a professional situation with the gaming industry when the question came up in Louisiana, I was very familiar with some of the events that took place. Mr. Bridges covers these events accurately and his penchant for detail is exceptional. With the number of players involved in this story, the author faced the difficult task of keeping the lineup straight for the reader. He has done a masterful job of this. Beyond the journalistic aspects of the book, I was most impressed with Mr. Bridges style and the development of the characters that were involved. Edwin Edwards is obviously more than a money-hungry, political buffoon, and the author did a tremendous job of exposing the dichotomy that is the former governor's personality. Clear pictures of the many paradoxs within the man emerged through the author's writing. Even the lesser characters became more than just who's who of the underbelly of Louisiana politics. I congratulate the author on a difficult job well done.

Huey Long, move over! This riveting tale of corruption reads like a nonfiction version of The Firm. With journalistic precision, Bridges details the patronage, extortion, payoffs, and other shady dealings that permeated four-term Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards' administration. While Edwards is the central focus of the book, the author introduces us to an array of fascinating characters. These range from mobsters intent on getting a cut of Louisiana's gambling revenues to ordinary people confronted with navigating an unthinkably dysfunctional state government. Bridges clearly knows his material and shows remarkable insight into the strange netherworld of Louisiana politics.

A fascinating chronicle of Louisiana's former governor and the state's infamous wheeling and dealing. If Louisiana's politics are a contact sport then watching political high jinks is the state's favorite spectator sport. This is the hottest read to come off the press lately. Packed with blazing reality it was written by a reporter who obviously knows how to tell a story detailed with the people, places and greed that make gambling a chump's game. It's fast paced, accurate and a brutal picture of Louisiana's swampy back rooms. This book is a sure thing.