Super Casino: Inside the + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Super Casino: Inside the "New" Las Vegas Book

Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley, whose several books include a study of Leavenworth Prison, turns his meticulous journalistic eye on yet another notorious venue: Las Vegas. Don't expect him to unearth a spate of scandalous doings, though: Sin City isn't quite what it used to be. "Howard Hughes is now only a historical footnote," Earley writes. "Liberace's trademark candelabra sits in a museum. Elvis has been gone so long that tourists often think his impersonators look more like the King than he did. The old Las Vegas is dead." The new Vegas, however, is very much alive. In two years of visits, with particular access to the Egyptian-themed Luxor Hotel, Earley gathers a comprehensive history of the city's "gaming" industry, including the biographies of such important figures as the Bellagio's Steve Wynn. He also takes a firsthand look into the lives of several Vegas residents and regulars. The book's chapters, often dense with historical fact, are neatly interrupted by fascinating first-person accounts: an old-time dealer talks about being threatened by Frank Sinatra, a hotel manager at a casino gets chewed out by her boss for renting out a $5,000 room to movie stars, and a cab driver talks about falling out of love with this high-rolling town, though he still tries to get his cut of the money. "The money," he says. "There is so much of it in this town that you learn to close your eyes. I hate it but I can't walk away. Who can?" Perhaps the readers of Super Casino will be able to restrain themselves after they read Earley's explanation of how clearly casino odds are stacked against them. --Maria Dolan Read More

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  • Product Description

    Las Vegas was a mob town built on restlessness and hunger, on glitter, greed, and the firm belief that anyone can get lucky once. But in the last decade Las Vegas has had its own change of fortune, transforming itself from a gambler's fun house to one of the country's top family vacation spots. Now Pete Earley--the investigative journalist and award-winning author who stormed Leavenworth in The Hot House--takes us inside today's colossal theme casinos, in a fascinating look at the life, death, and fantastic rebirth of the Las Vegas Strip.

    With 320 days of sunshine, 500 churches, 27 golf courses, and no state income tax, Las Vegas is the ultimate boomtown. And at the heart of the boom are the new "entertainment superstores" known as super casinos. How do they run? Who are the business titans responsible for these extravagant showplaces? And why was the gaudy Vegas of the Rat Pack era remade in the first place?

    Pete Earley traces this evolution by taking a probing look at the checkered history of Las Vegas--when moguls, mobsters, and the world's top entertainers came together to create this ultimate monument to American excess. This fascinating book reveals the real stories of well-known power brokers like Steve Wynn, Vegas legends like Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel, and the gripping rise and fall and rise again of the entrepreneurs behind one of the largest gaming corporations in the nation, the colossus Circus Circus, to which the author was given unique access.

    Earley's trademark you-are-there style brings us front and center as "whales" win and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few seconds. We see grifters try every trick in the book to beat the odds--while eye-in-the-sky cameras record all the action. We go behind the scenes to meet the blackjack dealers and hookers, the heavy hitters and bit players, the maids and chefs, security officers, cabbies, and showgirls who are caught up in the mercurial pace that pulses at the heart of this astounding city.

    This lively, probing book lays forth the real Las Vegas and shows how and why it has become the biggest draw in the country, offering adult and family entertainment like no other in the world. The result is an intriguing, often troubling look at a uniquely American city founded on greed--and a nation that built its own mad Mecca in the desert.


  • 0553095021
  • 9780553095029
  • Pete Earley
  • 1 January 2000
  • Bantam Books
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 400
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