"Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for the magazine, wrote this week’s cover story on casinos. Sokolove is the author of three books: “Warrior Girls,” about the epidemic of injuries among young female athletes; “The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry”; and “Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose.” His last cover story for the magazine was on the double-amputee Olympic hopeful Oscar Pistorius.

What first got you interested in doing a story on casino economics?

I’ve traveled around the U.S. a lot in recent years, much of it in the course of researching stories for the magazine. I started noticing that nearly anywhere I went, I’d see signs inviting me to get off the highway to patronize a casino. Often, I was in places that were pretty rural or that I imagined were socially conservative. At some point, I thought to myself: What’s this about? I think that’s how a lot of story ideas begin — just with a kind of, huh, that’s strange, or that’s new. My interest was not specifically Foxwoods, but rather the sense that casinos had become ubiquitous."

Get the Story:
Behind the Cover Story: Michael Sokolove on Casinos That Crash (The New York Times 3/19)

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NYT: Mashantucket Tribe struggles to keep its casino afloat (3/14)