Denton, Sally and Morris, Roger. The Money and the Power: The Making of
Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947-2000. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2001. 479 pages.
Sally Denton and Roger Morris independently enjoyed impressive
careers as investigative writers, and then they got married and wrote this
history of Las Vegas. From Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel to the Kennedy
family, and from Mormon bankers and the Mafia to Hank Greenspun, Howard
Hughes and Paul Laxalt, the events that intersect this little piece of
deranged desert are too vast for even two reporters. Too many roads connect
Las Vegas to other seamy stories, and there are too few pages in one book
to do them justice. Within this limitation the book is successful. It
spends most of its effort on a handful of personalities that were central
to Las Vegas, and doesn't try to venture too far beyond a colorful
snapshot, as opposed to a smoking-gun history.
There's no Conspiracy to uncover here. Rather there's an entire chain
of mini-conspiracies, supported by a corrupt culture that knows nothing
else. Washington DC is similar, although it employs diplomats and spin
doctors instead of blunt-talking, drug-money mobsters, and boasts patriotic
memorials instead of gambling glitz. Both get a steady stream of tasteless,
vapid tourists. The authors vote for Las Vegas, though, as the "first city
of the twenty-first century."
ISBN 0-375-40130-X
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