Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards. (Booktalk: the big sleazy).

By Tyler Bridges Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 480 pages, $27

What do you get when you take a state with a notoriously corrupt political tradition and combine it with an industry that reeks of organized crime, all presided over by a governor who today would be described as "Clintonesque"? You get Louisiana's ill-fated flirtation with legalized gambling in the 1990s.

Louisiana's oil-centered economy went through a crisis in the 1980s when petroleum prices collapsed. The backdrop for the state's dilemma, Walker Percy wrote, could be "summarized by that dubious expression, laissez le bon temps fouler (let the good times roll), which can be read as referring to the genuine joy of Louisiana life. But it also translates into that old Louisiana penchant for voting for flamboyant types, upcountry good ol' boys and Cajun slickers who are long on show biz and short on ethics. As long as the party lasted, the oil flowed, and the good times rolled, it didn't seem to matter. Well folks, the party's over. The bon temps have just about roulered out."

Writing in 1985, Percy foreshadows the events described in Bad Bet on the Bayou. Tyler Bridges examines the story of Louisiana gambling going back to antebellum days when poker and craps found their way into the United States via riverboat gamblers in New Orleans. Later in the nineteenth century, Louisiana had a state lottery that collapsed in scandal. That lottery, which began during Reconstruction, was reauthorized by the state after a massive bribery campaign in the 1880s, only to be eventually outlawed by the federal government.

Fast-forward to the 1991 gubernatorial election. In that race, unpopular incumbent Buddy Roemer faced Edwin Edwards and former KKK wizard David Duke. Both Edwards and Duke finished ahead of Roemer in the primary, then faced each other in the general election. Edwards' checkered reputation--he had been indicted, but not convicted, during his third term as governor in a previous decade--made the choice difficult. A victory by the controversial former Klansman might have been disastrous for the Pelican State, though, and toward the end of the campaign Edwards won support from Roemer backers by promising not to push for a big New Orleans casino.

If only he had kept that promise. The heart of Bridges' narrative concerns the process of ...