Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino [Paperback]

Jeff Benedict (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2001

With compelling detail, Without Reservation tells the stunning story of the rise of the richest Indian tribe in history.

In 1973, an old American Indian woman dies with nothing left of her tribe but a 214-acre tract of abandoned forest. It seems to be the end of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. But it is just the beginning. Over the next three decades, the reservation grows to nearly 2,000 acres, home to more than 600 people claiming to be tribal members.  It has also become home to Foxwoods, the largest casino in the world, grossing more than $1 billion a year.

Without Reservation reveals the mysterious roots of today's Pequot tribe, the racial tension that divides its members, and the Machiavellian internal power struggle over who will control the tribe's funds. Author Jeff Benedict brings to us the deal makers, the courtroom machinations, the trusts and betrayals.

Now, with remarkable new information, the paperback brings us up-to-date on these revelations, which lead to state and federal investigations and calls for congressional hearings.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeff Benedict conducted the first national study on sexual assault and athletes. He has published three books on athletes and crime, including a blistering exposé on the NFL, Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL, and Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women. He is a lawyer and an investigative journalist who has written five books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Perennial Books by Harper Books; 1st edition (July 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060931965
• ISBN-13: 978-0060931964
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #704,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeff Benedict published his first book - Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women - during his first year of law school in 1997. At the time he was interning in the District Attorney's Child Abuse Unit in Boston and planning on becoming a prosecutor. By the time he earned his law degree in 2000, he had published three more books: Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL (Warner Books, 1998); Athletes and Acquaintance Rape (Sage Publications, 1998); and Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino (HarperCollins, 2000). By then he'd decided to be a writer instead of a lawyer.

His books on athletes and crime established him as the national expert on the subject. Plus, he was the lead researcher on two groundbreaking studies conducted at Northeastern University - one on student-athletes and violence against women and one on arrest and conviction rates for athletes. In addition to being a regular analyst on network and cable news programs, Benedict served as an expert witness on behalf of rape and domestic violence victims; consulted for law firms representing victims of violence committed by athletes; and frequently appeared as a keynote speaker for women's groups, victim advocacy organizations and law enforcement conferences.

But his revelatory book on the world's largest Indian casino took him in another direction. Without Reservation questioned the legitimacy of the country's most powerful Indian tribe, prompting calls for a Congressional investigation and contributing to the defeat of a 20-year member of Congress that had helped the tribe obtain federal recognition. Benedict's book became the subject of a 60 Minutes segment and the author went on to run for Congress in the district where the tribe and its casino - Foxwoods - are located. His platform was built on reigning in the casino industry. Talk about controversy! Despite earning the support of the Wall Street Journal, Benedict fell short of capturing the Democratic nomination.

But he didn't mind. He just forged ahead and formed the nation's first statewide non-profit corporation dedicated to stopping casino expansion. As president of The Connecticut Alliance Against Casino Expansion, he partnered with Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and led the lobbying effort to pass landmark legislation outlawing new casinos in Connecticut. In 2004 Benedict testified against Donald Trump and other casino moguls before the House Committee on Government Reform as part a congressional investigation into the undue influence of money and lobbyists on the tribal recognition process.

At the same time, Benedict kept writing. In 2005 he conducted a six-month investigation into the negative social and economic impacts of Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods - currently the two largest casinos in the world - and published his findings in a 2-part series in the Hartford Courant: Raw Deal and Losing Hand. He also testified before the Massachusetts legislature and the Philadelphia City Council in opposition to proposals to embrace casino gambling as an economic stimulus. He served as an advisor to municipalities and grassroots organizations throughout the country. The press dubbed him 'Consultant to the Stars' after he was hired to help David Crosby, Bo Derek, Elton John's longtime songwriter Bernie Taupin and others oppose plans to expand the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, California. He and Crosby also lobbied the U.S. Senate's Indian Affairs Committee.

Benedict has written five other highly acclaimed books on a wide range of topics. His book No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America's Oldest Skeletons (HarperCollins, 2003) was the basis of a Discovery Channel documentary and was the subject of ABC News 20/20 segment. On the heels of Kobe Bryant's arrest on rape charges in Colorado, Benedict published Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence & Crime (HarperCollins, 2004), which was the basis of a 2-part special on ABC News 20/20 also titled 'Out of Bounds.' During pre-trial proceedings in the Kobe Bryant case, Benedict got access to sealed court documents and medical records that became the basis of three stories he wrote about the case for Sports Illustrated. After Bryant's case was dismissed, Benedict wrote a short series on Bryant for the Los Angeles Times, including an award-winning feature story that revealed why the case against Bryant fell apart.

In 2007 Benedict published The Mormon Way of Doing Business: How Eight Western Boys Reached the Top of Corporate America (Warner Business Books). It was based on interviews with the CEOs at JetBlue, Madison Square Garden, Dell, and Deloitte & Touche, along with the CFO of American Express and the dean of Harvard Business School. Benedict also wrote and co-produced his first television documentary based on the book. It aired on BYU-TV and on the PBS and CBS affiliates in Utah. He filmed commercials with Glenn Beck to promote the short film. After the release of the book and the film, Benedict teamed up with the executive he had profiled for a series of forums at Yale, Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, and Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Business.

The following year Benedict was commissioned to write a book on a company that Warren Buffett purchased for $200 million. A few years later it was worth over $1 billion. How to Build a Business Warren Buffett Would Buy: The RC Willey Story (Shadow Mountain) was released in 2009. Buffett wrote the book's foreword. Also in 2009, Benedict released Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage (Grand Central Publishing). He spent three years chronicling the eminent domain battle in Kelo v. New London, considered the most controversial Supreme Court decision since Roe v. Wade. The book received universal praise: "a fascinating narrative" (New York Times Book Review); "an absorbing read" (Wall Street Journal); and "a mind-blowing story" (NPR's Diane Rehm). Following the book's release, Benedict spent a year traveling the country with plaintiff Susette Kelo, talking to Americans about property rights.

Today Benedict is a regular contributor for SI.com and a Distinguished Professor of English at Southern Virginia University, where he teaches a seminar called Writing and Mass Media, along with a course on current affairs. He is a frequent public speaker on athletes and crime, Indian gaming, eminent domain, and leadership and ethics in business. His forthcoming book chronicles the making of the world's #1 foodborne illness lawyer Bill Marler, who rose to prominence while representing children poisoned in America's largest E. coli outbreak. Benedict has begun working on a new book that he's been privately commissioned to write about an Islamic fundamentalist who converts to Christianity and is imprisoned as an infidel.
Jeff Benedict was born in 1966 in New London, Connecticut. He has a Bachelor's in History from Eastern Connecticut State University, a Master's in Political Science from Northeastern University, and a J.D. from the New England School of Law. He previously practiced law in Connecticut, where he has spent most of his life. He currently lives in Virginia on a Civil War-era farm with his wife and best friend Lydia Benedict and their four children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Quick Lesson in Political Shenanigans!, August 15, 2002

By 

Navyvet "navyvet" (Griswold, Connecticut United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino (Paperback)

If you live in Eastern Connecticut, as I do, or if you live in the eastern part of the US , chances are good that you've been to the Foxwoods Casino. You might want to read this book in order to better understand to whom the millions of dollars we collectively spend there goes!

I was not able to put down this book since it arrived! It illustrates how complacent politics and leadership guided by tunnel vision literally changed the face of the eastern part of this state. If a small fraction of the injustices done to the people of Ledyard and the surrounding towns is true, then we should ALL be outraged that this travesty has been allowed to occur.

... .

My suggestion is that you read the book and make your own decision. I can say that it has been enlightening to me especially now that Connecticut is planning on allowing even more newly recognized tribes to build still more casinos in eastern Connecticut. Lets hope nobody else loses their land or their home to benefit THAT endeavor.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How the world really works, July 9, 2001

By 

SyrJohan "syrjohan" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino (Paperback)

The end of the jacket blurb describes this book: "As compelling as a novel, _Without Reservation is must reading for anyone interested in the way today's world _really_ works."

This is a fair description. It does have the characterization, the pacing and the storytelling of a novel. This is "compelling" at its best but sometimes seems silly and superficial. The most fascinating thing is indeed the insight into how the world works and one does not need a particular interest in gambling or Native Americans to appreciate it. We see how lawyers can revolutionize the world through close reading, discovering new powers in old books while at the same time it becomes clear that elected officials have no time for or interest in reading the legislation that they implement. The book traces the rise of Skip Hayward, founder and chief of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. Hayward often appears in the worst light, especially in the chapters on his first marriage (he was really awful to his wife). But he is also a man of charisma and vision. He organizes a tribe that was long thought extinct and creates a billion dollar business. The irony is that the get-rich scheme that is finally successful for Hayward is based on the work of three extremely idealistic people: John Stevens, leader of the impoverished Passamaquoddy tribe of Maine; Tom Tureen, a Princeton educated public service lawyer; and Susan MacCulloch, Stevens's wife and an anthropologist who is a leading expert on the Indian tribes of the East. Together they discover how to gain legal recognition and compensation for tribes that were swallowed up in the original 13 colonies. They approach Hayward and make all his future success possible.

I really enjoyed this book and was gripped by the story, but it is badly in need of editing, at least in the hardcover first edition that I read. There are repeated misuses of homophones and the author has a problem with numbers. A person is described as in her twenties in 1970 when the next page gives her birthdate as 1934. At one point he explains that the Supreme Court takes "less than 5 percent" of the cases submitted from lower courts and "[t]he other 95 percent are turned away." On the next page the odds of the court taking the case "were no better than one in ninety-five." Either figure is plausible but they are not the same. However, this is a book about the power of lawyers, and the author took his own lesson: he wrote the book while finishing his law degree.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploitation at it's best........, February 2, 2004

By 

Vaniesha Honani "veno007" (Long Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino (Paperback)

I started reading this book in Borders and was compelled to buy it, because I had to find the justice or the "all is well" at the end of this story...unfortunately the story has not ended as Benedict states. I am a full blooded Native American and believe in the rights of all natives in this country, however I also believe that latching onto "native-americanism" as a means to gain what little goodness comes our way is the lowest form of greed. It makes my skin crawl. I don't think Benedict could give a more compelling detail of the events that took place. I believe every Native American law class should read this book, in hopes that we one day bring the truth to light and force the wrong doers to admit their pretenses or lack of better judgment. The rise of this said tribe reminds me of another crazy true story, the story of the only King of San Francisco. He existed because everybody played along to this man's statement that he was a prince of England and declared himself the King of San Francisco. He got many priveleges because people LET HIM!! I recommend this book to those who don't have anything important to do the next day. I was so angry midway through the book I couldn't go to sleep til' 1am and had to get up at 4am. Now that's a book for you!!