Customer Reviews

Historic Photos of Las Vegas

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Jeff Burbank is a journalist and writer about Las Vegas and teaches in the English Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Here he has selected about 200 photographs showing the rise of Las Vegas from a mere railroad stop in 1904 to the booming city of lights it had become by 1969. As in all these Historic Photos of series, these are all large format black and white photos. Burbank provides interesting and informative chapter introductions and captions for the photos.

The book shows us the photos in four periods. The first shows us the rise from railstop to boomtown 1904-1910 and is quite fascinating. The second is "Molding a Desert Community" before the Hoover Dam 1911-1929.

The third chapter takes us through the building of Hoover Dam during the Great Depression and how World War II requiring large numbers of soldiers to pass through Las Vegas by train and the vast amounts electricity provided by the Hoover Dam changed the town.

The last chapter takes us through the early years of the Las Vegas we would recognize, with the brilliant lights, casinos, and the elaborate shows with the show girls. The period covered in the book takes us from 1950-1969. Obviously, Las Vegas has changed utterly since then, but the book is historic photos after all.

Fascinating stuff.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT COWBOYS'S VEGAS.
YOU WON'T SEE THE GLITTER.
ALSO, MOST OF THE IMAGES ARE IN LESS EXPENSIVE BOOKS.