Customer Reviews

Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Perhaps a little more well known for "Wiseguys", the book that became the movie "Goodfellas", Nicholas Pileggi is as good as they get when it comes to writing about the Mafia, its people and the drama of living the life. It is unfortunate that he doesn't work very fast - more books would be welcome.
"Casino" is the true story of Vegas in its heyday prior to the mega resort/casinos we see today, like Excalibur, New York New York, The Luxor, etc. Before large corporations turned Las Vegas into a theme park with casinos, the Chicago mob pretty much controlled the then famous casinos of the day, like the Stardust, where the movie "Casino" disguises it with the fictional name of The Tangier. Skimming the profits was the mob's business. Perhaps the greatest handicapper of all time, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, ran three major casinos and ran them well. Chicago sent out the legendary Tony Spilotro to keep an eye on "Lefty" and protect him and the moolah. Spilotro, however, had ideas of his own and soon became mired in a horrendous mess, dragging Rosenthal and eventually all the mob controlled casinos to their demise with him. Rosenthal still lives, and even has a web site, but Spilotro at books' end learns the hard way that being insubordinate to the mob and skimming their skim has dire consequences.
Pileggi is a master at showing a picture of the lives of these people, the shady deals, the threats from every corner, from the state, other criminals and the Mob, and how difficult life is for those who choose the gambling scene as a way of life.
It's morbid but fascinating reading. A must for fans of organized crime books.

Note this book is not fiction, nor a novelization of the film Casino. Like Wiseguy, it's the real account that Scorsese fashioned into a film (with Pileggi's help again).

Casino tells the story of the Chicago mob's major role in running Las Vegas, how it happened, and how it more or less ended (or appeared to) in the 1980s. Instead, corporations (institutionalized gangsters) took over, and now we're to assume that gambling is a respectable, fine industry. It's hard to cheer for the state 'gaming' officials as they pursue mobsters who are skimming a casino, of all places. A character in the film says it best when he exclaims, 'You mean the money we're robbing is bein' robbed?!'

A good read before or after the excellent film. Readers will note that the basis for the Frank Vincent character (Frank Marino in the film, Frank Cullotta in real life) provides much of the info here, certainly on Tony 'the Ant' Spillotro, the basis for the Pesci character. There's quite a bit of detail as far shady business dealings, politics, and mob bosses go, but less of the nitty gritty mobster detail from Wiseguy.

Hard to know whether to weep for the old or new Las Vegas. While it was mobbed-up in the past, it's now a neutralized Disneyworld and a respectable holiday destination for families. One wonders who the real greedheads are.

A good, if overlong account.

This book IS NOT fiction. It is the true story that the movie Casino was based on.

In the book, the names have not been changed and there are a few more details than in the movie.

If you like the movie, I suggest reading the book to get the whole picture of what went down.

For years, Lefty Rosenthal and Tony Spilotro were two of Las Vegas's heaviest hitters, Chicago boys who moved West to take advantage of easy money and short odds. Lefty was bright and worked through the system, however corrupt. Tony was a bully who shook things up while looking out for himself.

The two characters are the center of Nicholas Pileggi's "Casino", a true-crime account of Vegas during the 1970s and 1980s, when organized crime used the gambling mecca as its own private money tree.

Published in 1995 as a tie-in to the Martin Scorsese movie, "Casino" the book is slightly different in that it offers the real story rather than the fictionalized version seen in the film. The characters don't pop off the page the way they do off the screen, but they are better grounded by reality.

As with his earlier book "Wise Guy" (made into another Scorsese movie, "Goodfellas"), Pileggi works with a lot of first-hand testimony. He captures a sense of really hearing these guys as you read the pages, tuning into their hard world. But a couple of serious problems soon present themselves.

The first is that Pileggi doesn't have the same kind of story he did with "Wise Guy". Instead of the record Lufthansa airport heist memorably depicted there, you get a long story about how Joe got mad when someone failed to show Gregory Peck's secretary a good-enough time in Vegas. Pileggi offers this as an example of the scut work that made Joe restless and difficult within the Mob, but it's also the kind of smallball that makes "Casino" feel less vital over time. People coming to this after seeing the movie are going to be surprised by the relative lack of violence here. How many times can you read about crimes that largely occurred inside balance books?

The second issue is Pileggi's way of relying almost exclusively on first-hand testimony, especially from Rosenthal. Lefty comes across as a charmer, but also by his own account too removed from the illegal aspect of the story. That may be Rosenthal's own spin; the guy who was Rosenthal's nominal boss calls him a liar and psychopath who was at the center of the mob skims. Rosenthal denies any knowledge of skims.

This flies straight in the face of the portrait Pileggi paints, of Lefty being so detail obsessed he counts blueberries in the muffins his casino restaurants serve. Yet Pileggi leaves Rosenthal's denial unchallenged in his minimal narration. In fact, he doesn't provide much textual background for anything in "Casino", including how important Rosenthal and Spilotro ultimately were to the Mob in Vegas, just that Rosenthal was good at gambling while Spilotro knocked over some jewelry stores.

Pileggi also gets a lot of mileage out of how Joe two-timed Lefty with Lefty's gorgeous gold-digger wife. Geri Rosenthal's probably the most interesting character, a force of will who demands everything she can from life. She isn't sympathetic, but neither is anyone else in this one-note book. That kind of grates after a while.

Readers coming to this book from 'Wiseguy' will become aware of a major flaw in this account of organised crime's workings in Las Vegas from the 1960s through to the 1980s. Henry Hill was free to more or less spill the beans unguardedly and his candour and thrilling free-flowing narrative is exactly what key participants in this story still alive cannot give us (despite what the book's gushing blurb promises).This gives a patchy quality to much of the narrative and by the end the reader is left mulling as many unanswered questions as those the book attempts to amswer. There are fascinating aspects to the book (given the characters involved there could hardly not be) but ultimately the book fails to satisfy. A definitive volume on the history of Las Vegas and organised crime will surely come one day, but at the moment too many lips are zipped.

In the Desert of Las Vegas Nevada is where a lot of the problems of the heads of the Stardust casino are solved. The bright lights of Las Vegas do not shield the darkness of the desert surrounding it. In the novel Casino Nicholas Pileggi delves deep into the lives of the shady side of Las Vegas and the people who run it. The protagonist Frank AKA Lefty Rosenthal makes sure the readers understand that if you love someone you have to trust them with your life, with everything that you have because if you don't than what is the point of being in love. But Nicholas Pileggi puts in his own underlying message of in the life of a mobster you cannot trust anyone including your best friend and your wife. This book is full of non stop action and suspense. It gives you an inside look at the lives of the mobsters that made las vegas famous. I highly suggest readin Casino by Nicholas Pileggi.

My rating on this book is really a three and a half, if given the option to rate a half-star, that is.

I enjoyed tremandously learning about the Teamsters, the politicians and of course the Mafia involvement in the Las Vegas casino operations. The book exceled in the abundance of information.

However, the writing itself was not so great therefore lowering the reading experience. Just as in real life, when people tell you their side of the story, it hardly ever concurs with someone else's account. Since the book was really a collage of vaious narrations, the author had a hard time weaving together different points of views and tones. Sometimes readers are left wondering what really happened.

I would recommend this book for people who are interested in information and stories regarding the Mafia. The topic is very interesting, but for those who prefers a bit more drama and fluency of writing, then this may not be your top choice.

Everything good that has been said about this book is true. It is vivid, engrossing, informative, and EXCELLENT. I love reading about the crime families and this story of Las Vegas was such a good idea. Kudos to Nicholas Pileggi! The movie, of course, was awesome, and it is hard to tell which one is the best in this case. But anyway, read this. You will be mesmerized. It's a magnificent tale.

I found this book to be a good read since I like reading about mob history. I always find it interesting to read about the different money making oppurtunities that they create, and in Vegas boy did they find a jackpot! Because I have read other mob books I was familiar with some of the names mentioned in the book and their backgrounds. The movie Casino has been around for 10 yrs. and I refused to watch it until I had read the book, well I rented it as soon as I finised the book and was very pleased with how the movie followed the book. It was good to have all the inside info that the book gave me as watched the movie. If you're into mob stuff I have to believe you will like this book.

This gripping narrative exposes Midwest mob influence in Las Vegas during the 1970-80's. Author Nicholas Pileggi focuses on four major characters. The most prominent was ex-sports handicapper and bookie Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who became an innovative casino manager. Lefty ran the casino at the Stardust Hotel, the location from where the Chicago and Kansas City syndicates skimmed millions in gambling revenues. We also read about Lefty's friend and mob enforcer Tony Spilotro, front man Allen Glick, and Lefty's glamorous but volatile wife Geri. The author describes casino operations, financing by teamster pensions, and gambling executives who knew enough to look the other way. We also see how unchecked greed and ego can destroy casino operators as surely as it does some of their customers. The book's only weakness was that Pileggi seemed to go easy on a couple of the major characters.

"Casino" became a 1995 movie of the same name. Pileggi also wrote "Wiseguy," basis for another excellent mob film ("Goodfellas") by Martin Scorsese. "Casino" doesn't quite match "Wiseguy," but it's a highly readable and informative book.