West Las Vegas

West Las Vegas

Author: Patricia Hershwitzky

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738581965

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Original Las Vegas faced stiff odds with fluctuating fortunes throughout the 20th century. Celebrated as the McWilliams Townsite in 1904, Las Vegas's first commercial enterprise was quickly crushed by savvy developers owning most of the water rights on the southeast side of the railroad tracks. Deprived of resources and services, the tent-riddled ground soon earned the name Ragtown and was populated by the area's poorest, the majority being minorities. During the 1940s and 1950s, a soaring influx of blacks from small plantation towns in the South descended upon Las Vegas, seeking a promised land during the boom of wartime industry, but Jim Crow laws flew in with them. Ironically, segregation led to the emergence of the Westside as an enclave of successful businesses, services, entertainment and casino venues, dozens of churches, and middle-class housing. Although integration brought an exodus and decline, a bold new generation of West Las Vegans is once again revitalizing the original Westside community.


Witch

Witch

Author: Glenn Puit

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2005-12-06

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780425207192

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Drawing on extensive interviews with the accused herself, here is the sordid, twisted, and surprising story of Brookey Lee West—a successful technical writer from Silicon Valley who became Las Vegas’ most notorious female serial killer. In February, 2001, police uncovered the decomposed remains of Christine Smith bagged like garbage in a Las Vegas storage unit. She’d been dead for years. Next to the makeshift tomb were books on witchcraft and Satanism. It didn’t take long for authorities to discover that the owner of the foul Canyon Gate Unit #317 was Christine’s own daughter, Brookey Lee West. Further investigation revealed something even more shocking—a one-woman crime spree that spanned two decades, stretched from Nevada to California, and may have counted among its victims Brookey’s own husband and brother....


Wildest of the Wild West

Wildest of the Wild West

Author: Howard Bryan

Publisher: Clear Light Pub

Published: 1991-07-01

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 9780940666139

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The 'Wild West' stories of Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone pale in comparison to the incredible story of Las Vegas, New Mexico, for decades considered the most violent community on America's western frontier. In Wildest of the Wild West, popular Western historian Howard Bryan provides a spirited account of the violent, melodramatic, and often bizarre events that centred in and around this small Hispanic farm and ranching community from 1835 to 1915.


Las Vegas For Dummies

Las Vegas For Dummies

Author: Mary Herczog

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-11-03

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0470438010

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Las Vegas can be classy or tacky, cheesy or a bit sleazy, and it's always entertaining. Get ready to cruise the hot spots, test your luck at the casinos, shop the upscale boutiques, take in the spectacular shows, hit the swinging dance clubs, or escape from the glitz and neon and take in natural wonders on refreshing day trips. This guide gives you insider info on where to go and what to do, with great advice on how to: Find the best casinos and play the most popular games Stroll the strip, where you can watch a volcano explode, see the ancient Pyramids, and explore New York, Paris, Rome, and Venice Dine on delicacies prepared by celebrity chefs such as Joel Robuchon at the Mansion (in the MGM Grand) or Emeril Lagasse at Table 10 (in the Palazzo), load up at buffets like Paris, Le Village Buffet (in the Paris Hotel), or split a sub at Capriotti's Take in spectacular entertainment from Cirque de Soleil, Blue Man Group, Penn & Teller, and many more Enjoy performances by big-name stars like Celine Dion or catch the classic topless Vegas revue, Jubilee! See shows like the magnificent Bellagio Water Fountains, hang out with dolphins at Mirage's Dolphin Habitat, or tour the inimitable Liberace Museum Like every For Dummies travel guide, Las Vegas For Dummies, Fifth Edition includes: Down-to-earth trip-planning advice What you shouldn't miss — and what you can skip The best hotels and restaurants for every budget Lots of detailed maps You'll even find a time-saving "Quick Concierge" section with key phone numbers, addresses, and handy how-to's for getting around so you won’t miss a minute of the Vegas action!


Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Author: Hunter S. Thompson

Publisher:

Published: 2003-04-07

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780007161232

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This is a reissue of the novel inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold... And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.


The Real Las Vegas

The Real Las Vegas

Author: David Littlejohn

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1999-10-28

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0195351401

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What images come to mind when you think of Las Vegas? Mobsters and showgirls, magicians and tigers, multimillion-dollar poker games and prizefights; towering signboards that light up the night in front of ever more spectacular casino hotels. But real people live here, too--over a million today, two million tomorrow. Greater Las Vegas has long been the fastest growing metropolitan area in America. And almost every aspect of its citizens' lives is influenced by the almighty power of the gambling industry. A team of fifteen reporters led by David Littlejohn, together with prize winning photo-journalist Eric Gran, studied the "real" Las Vegas--the city beyond the Strip and Downtown--for the better part of a year. They talked to teenagers (whose suicide and dropout rates frighten parents), senior citizens (many of whom spend their days playing bingo and the slots), Mexican immigrants (who build the new houses and clean the hotels), homeless people and angry blacks, as well as local police, active Christians, city officials, and prostitutes. They looked into the local churches, the powerful labor unions, pawn shops, the real estate boom, defiant ranchers to the north, and dire predictions that the city is about to run out of water. Proud Las Vegans claim that theirs is just a friendly southwestern boomtown--"the finest community I have ever lived in," says Bishop Daniel Walsh, who comes from San Francisco. But their picture of Las Vegas as a vibrant, civic-minded metropolis conflicts with evidence of transiency, rootlessness, political impotence, and social dysfunction. In this close-up investigation of the real lives being led in America's most tourist-jammed, gambling-driven city, readers will discover a Las Vegas very different from the one they may have seen or imagined.


The Strip

The Strip

Author: Stefan Al

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-03-03

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 026203574X

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The transformations of the Strip—from the fake Wild West to neon signs twenty stories high to “starchitecture”—and how they mirror America itself. The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West, with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs, then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates, followed by replicas of Venetian canals, New York skyscrapers, and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015—ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently, the Strip decided to get classy, with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the “implosion capital of the world” as developers, driven by competition, got rid of the old to make way for the new—offering a non-metaphorical definition of “creative destruction.” In The Strip, Stefan Al examines the many transformations of the Las Vegas Strip, arguing that they mirror transformations in America itself. The Strip is not, as popularly supposed, a display of architectural freaks but representative of architectural trends and a record of social, cultural, and economic change. Al tells two parallel stories. He describes the feverish competition of Las Vegas developers to build the snazziest, most tourist-grabbing casinos and resorts—with a cast of characters including the mobster Bugsy Siegel, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and the would-be political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson. And he views the Strip in a larger social context, showing that it has not only reflected trends but also magnified them and sometimes even initiated them. Generously illustrated with stunning color images throughout, The Strip traces the many metamorphoses of a city that offers a vivid projection of the American dream.


Unreal City

Unreal City

Author: Judith Nies

Publisher: Bold Type Books

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1568587481

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An epic struggle over land, water, and power is erupting in the American West and the halls of Washington, DC. It began when a 4,000-square-mile area of Arizona desert called Black Mesa was divided between the Hopi and Navajo tribes. To the outside world, it was a land struggle between two fractious Indian tribes; to political insiders and energy corporations, it was a divide-and-conquer play for the 21 billion tons of coal beneath Black Mesa. Today, that coal powers cheap electricity for Los Angeles, a new water aqueduct into Phoenix, and the neon dazzle of Las Vegas. Journalist and historian Judith Nies has been tracking this story for nearly four decades. She follows the money and tells us the true story of wealth and water, mendacity, and corruption at the highest levels of business and government. Amid the backdrop of the breathtaking desert landscape, Unreal City shows five cultures colliding—Hopi, Navajo, global energy corporations, Mormons, and US government agencies—resulting in a battle over resources and the future of the West. Las Vegas may attract 39 million visitors a year, but the tourists mesmerized by the dancing water fountains at the Bellagio don’t ask where the water comes from. They don’t see a city with the nation’s highest rates of foreclosure, unemployment, and suicide. They don’t see the astonishing drop in the water level of Lake Mead—where Sin City gets 90 percent of its water supply. Nies shows how the struggle over Black Mesa lands is an example of a global phenomenon in which giant transnational corporations have the power to separate indigenous people from their energy-rich lands with the help of host governments. Unreal City explores how and why resources have been taken from native lands, what it means in an era of climate change, and why, in this city divorced from nature, the only thing more powerful than money is water.