Reddit reviews Roll The Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition)

Happy to!
[Suburban Xanadu] (https://amzn.to/2Kc0Nud) grew out of my doctoral dissertation. It's my most academic book, and Routledge keeps the price pretty high. If you can borrow it from a library or get a used copy, decent reading. It looks at why casino resorts developed in Las Vegas after World War II, particularly which national trends they benefited from.

[Cutting the Wire: Gambling Prohibition and the Internet] (https://amzn.to/2HIU1Ob) looks at how the Wire Act (1961) was passed, and how it was used to prosecute online gambling operations in the late 1990s. I go back to early 20th century attempts to outlaw the uses of telegraphs for gambling purposes, talk about the development of sports betting, and sketch the brief history of online gaming, circa 2005.

[Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling] (http://amzn.to/2vLFcDA) is a global history of gambling from a broad perspective. It's a synthesis and more popular than academic.

[Grandisismo] (http://amzn.to/2w68wDa), which tells the story of Caesars Palace and Circus Circus founder Jay Sarno, is a biography that includes a lot about the mob in Las Vegas in the 1960s/1970s. Sarno was a fascinating character.

[Boardwalk Playground] (http://amzn.to/2imIsRg) is a collection of short pieces about Atlantic City history.

I've also edited a few collections and oral histories.

If you want an overall view of casino gaming, I would start with Roll the Bones. If you'd like a good story, I would start with Grandissimo.

I also have a series of feature stories at [Vegas Seven] (http://vegasseven.com/author/david/) magazine that may be of interest. Here are a few:

[Tropicana casino] (http://vegasseven.com/2017/03/30/tropicana-the-tiffany-of-the-strip/) Lots of mob stuff there

[Howard Hughes in Las Vegas] (http://vegasseven.com/2016/11/03/howard-hughes/)

[The Riviera] (http://vegasseven.com/2015/05/07/last-days-riviera/)

The other answer is a mish-mash of right and wrong...

Casinos have always been frowned upon in Louisiana, because gambling bad in Christian consciousness. For most of the 20th century it was especially problematic because organized crime took control of casinos, so they were generally considered a public nuisance.

In the 80s, Native American tribes with reservations had lost pretty much any kind of federal aid under Reagan. Some were thriving though: the California tribes that operated bingo parlors (broke people like to gamble), which California sought to shut down (broke people getting broker is no good for the economy). Tribes argued that because they live on Federal Land, not within the states, they should be allowed to gamble since there's no Federal law against gambling. The Supreme Court decided in their favor in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (1987).

When this became known, tribes across the country started to explore having casinos and it grew pretty fast. And at the same time, Bernie Goldstein, whose family were tug boat operators in Missouri, started to lobby state governments with access to federal waterways such as Iowa and Mississippi to operate casinos on the rivers. The laws passed in 1990 along the same template: gambling is allowed off-land IF local communities approved. Iowa, Mississippi and Illinois were the first, and Goldstein's Isle of Capri casinos were the first on the water.

Buddy Roemer passed the gambling control act in Louisiana in 1991, which only allowed 15 casino licences statewide, so Casino Rouge opened in 1994, then Belle of Baton Rouge and Isle of Capri Lake Charles opened right after. The "corruption" stuff comes when allowing casino licences - BR originally had one, but owners lobbied to have two (funny enough, now they have the same owner). The case of Harrah's is usually mentioned because one developer had money to build, but another developer (Harrah's) got the licence for New Orleans but they were broke. They had a stalemate, but eventually Edwin Edwards figured out that these were tourism dollars leaving the state, and forced the two companies to merge, Harrah's eventually opened in 1999.

edit: check out this book if you're interested in the subject: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615847781/