Las Vegas has been a gambling town since its 1905 founding. Its gambling halls, casino hotels, and resorts made it first a local curiosity, then a national obsession, and finally a global destination. The modern American casino resort was born on a lonely stretch of road that, within a decade, would become known as the Las Vegas Strip. This was a place where America could cut loose, enjoying pleasures denied at home. As visitors flocked to Las Vegas, casinos became a business and then an industry. Today, with casino gambling widely proliferated, Las Vegas still is the pinnacle of American gambling, be it on slot machines, blackjack, sports betting, or poker.
This book shares stories about how Las Vegas became?and stayed?America's gambling capital, focusing on the casinos that made it famous and the hustlers, gangsters, number-crunchers, and dreamers who made them. Those who fought against Las Vegas show up as well: the senator whose campaign against legal gambling magnificently backfired, or the pair of muckrakers who made Las Vegas seem more tantalizing than ever before?and gave the town its defining myth.
The dusty gambling halls of the city's earliest years seem to have little in common with the megaresorts that line Las Vegas Boulevard today, but they share an ethos summed up by pioneer gambler Jim McIntosh: "Something for your money." It's a vague promise that leaves everything to the imagination?perfect for a town that always thought big. From his Arizona Club to the sawdust joints of 1930s Fremont Street, from the birth of the Strip with the El Rancho Vegas to the fabulous, fated Flamingo, all the way through the glory years of the Sands and the imperial drama of Caesars Palace, casinos always offered something that couldn't be found elsewhere. Since the advent of corporate ownership in the 1970s, the story has gotten more interesting as casinos weathered three recessions and a pandemic, emerging stronger than ever.
On Fremont Street, along the Strip, in neighborhoods around the valley, casinos transformed Las Vegas. Something for Your Money shows how this very American business blossomed in its desert oasis.
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ISBN-13
978-0-9900016-9-0 (9780990001690)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Dr. David G. Schwartz is a gaming historian, affiliate professor of history, and administrator at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who writes about gambling, video games, hospitality, and history, and only occasionally pines for his days as Mr. Peanut on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
An Atlantic City native and former casino employee, Schwartz has written books about the development of casinos (Suburban Xanadu), the Wire Act (Cutting the Wire), gambling history (Roll the Bones), Las Vegas casino builder Jay Sarno (Grandissimo), Atlantic City (Boardwalk Playground), and the legendary Sands hotel-casino (At the Sands). His non-fiction writing has won multiple Nevada Press Association awards, and he was named the 2014 Trippies Las Vegas Person of the Year in recognition to his many contributions to the study of gambling and Las Vegas?and perhaps his tasty artisanal nut butters. He is also widely appreciated in his neighborhood for his macaroons.
Schwartz received his bachelor's and master's degrees (anthropology and history) from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in United States History from the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to his work as Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, he also teaches history at UNLV and speaks to a variety of groups on numerous topics, including "Seven Things You Should Know about Casinos" and "How Bugsy Blew It." He lives in Las Vegas with his wife Suni and their two kids, who prefer his homemade pizza.
