HITTING THE JACKPOT: The Inside Story of the Richest Indian Tribe in History

This brief chronicle details the machinations that brought the first casino to Connecticut and enormous wealth to a downtrodden Indian tribe. The Pequot Indians were near oblivion when one Pequot, Skip Hayward, a failed clam-shack owner with nothing left to lose, returned to the Ledyard, Conn., reservation to revive the tribe. With the help of shrewd pro bono lawyers, Hayward successfully landed federal assistance for Pequot reservation housing, but his biggest coup came when lawyers for the Pequots were able to settle a federal land claim suit that legitimized them as a tribe, allowing them to skirt a federal vetting process. This paved the way for the Pequots, situated perfectly between New York and Boston, to open a profitable bingo hall. They then expertly crafted and won a brilliant legal argument for a casino and, with the help of Malaysian investors, opened Foxwoods, Connecticut's first casino, in 1992. Amazingly, in little over a decade the tribe went from a few impoverished members to running a casino that grossed $158-million, with a $51-million profit, in its first year. Naturally, there were some problems: racial discord grew within the tribe as their numbers swelled to over 600, and competing casinos later cut into Foxwoods' success. Fromson, a journalist with TheStreet.com, has written a reliable account of the Pequots' financial ascent, though his brisk narrative often reads too much like an expanded newspaper story and is short on insight. Still, he ably captures the social, political and legal processes expertly finessed by the Pequots in making Foxwoods a reality. (Sept.)