Customer Reviews

The Last Honest Place in America: Paradise and Perdition in the New Las Vegas

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

 

 

The Last Honest Place in America covers a lot of the same ground that other books about Las Vegas have done in the past several years. Author Marc Cooper interviews a cross-section of Las Vegas types (stripper, blackjack dealer, casino owner, homeless advocate), reminisces about the old Las Vegas of the Mob, discusses some of the recent local scandals (the Binion murder, the political fight over lapdancing regulations that local columnists dubbed "G-Sting"), and profiles celebrity Mayor Oscar Goodman.

If you haven't already read Hal Rothman's The Grit Beneath the Glitter and Pete Early's Super Casino, then The Last Honest Place in America is a fun introduction to the behind-the-scenes Las Vegas.

However, there is something about Cooper's book that does stand out, and that is his interview with stripper Andrea Lee Hackett. Not only is Hackett a bit older than the other strippers at 49, but she is a full-time labor organizer as well. Although Vegas strippers aren't unionized (yet), Hackett works with the ACLU and labor organizations to protect her colleagues' rights. She is extremely articulate on labor issues and admits to being a Socialist and a former machinist at Boeing. Oh, and she used to be a man.

It probably won't be long before someone does an in-depth study of unionism in Las Vegas. It is one of the few places in America where, because of unionism (and I am by no means an uncritical fan of unions), a hotel maid or a valet or dishwasher can make a decent living. This phenomenon is worth a book by itelf, and The Last Honest Place in America is worth reading if only for Andrea Lee Hackett's story.

I picked this book up at the Mandalay Bay's Reading Room bookstore during my last visit to Vegas but read it after I got home. How can anyone take time to read a book in Vegas?

Marc Cooper's writing keeps moving for a quick overview of Vegas history, focusing on the couple of years after 9/11. For a book crammed with a lot of info and trivia, I didn't find any chapter where it slowed down or lagged.

Cooper writes about his own experience as a Vegas gambler (where most visitors and tourists exist), and chats with a transsexual stripper trying to unionize nude dancers, Blackjack dealers and other older Vegas denizens who reminisce about the Sin City they used to know. He also profiles the "Big O," Oscar Goodman, who first made his mark as a mob lawyer and now acts as the mayor of Las Vegas.

Cooper then moves on to listen to professionals working with addicted gamblers and an activist-monk fighting for the homeless, showing an underside to the party.

(I think the book would've been more interesting if Cooper had used his investigative skills to take a closer peek at the ultra-rich in Vegas, juxtaposing that with the chapters about the bottom-dwelling addicts and homeless. At the same time I was reading this book, I also read the latest Vanity Fair article by upper-crust gadfly, Dominick Dunne, detailing a lavish visit to the opening of the new Wynn Hotel & Casino. It would've fit nicely into Cooper's book, broadening it from the richest to the poorest in Vegas).

There are several complaints about Cooper turning political near the end of the book. There are snide comments about the War in Iraq and the Bush Administration, but the book doesn't turn into a complete political screed.
The venom Cooper reserves for an abstinence group meeting near Vegas does interfere with the flow, however. He talks about strippers, gambling addicts, crazy homeless, mobsters and even mob attorneys while remaining objective and indifferent to any of their messy details--but he completely tears into virgins participating in an abstinence program. It just about ruins the book.

(Also, there are no less than six typos in the epilogue alone in the paperback I read).

But this is still a good Vegas read.

Marc Cooper's book is a collection of essays about Las Vegas. The first quarter of the book is a history of the city, which will be old material unless this is the first book you've read on the subject. Why does everyone who writes about Las Vegas feel obligated to rehash the city's history? The rest of the book is an assortment of essays about such things as the Ted Binion murder trial, a Franciscan monk who works with the homeless, corruption in local politics, the life story of the author's favorite blackjack dealer, a self-help group for gambling addicts, and a transsexual stripper who is trying to unionize the city's strippers. Cooper loves to gamble and conveys the addictive nature of trying to win at blackjack. What surprised me most is that for only $250 you can take a 100 hour course on how to be a blackjack dealer - surely a bargain for training that actually leads to a job.

I can't help but compare this book to Hal Rothman's "Neon Metropolis," which covers the same territory. Rothman's book covers a wider variety of topics and focuses more on life away from The Strip than Cooper does. On the other hand, Cooper doesn't seem to have an ideological axe to grind like Rothman, although both writers are politically liberal. Cooper's theme, that Las Vegas is an "honest" place at a time when Americans have lost faith in other institutions, seems like quite a stretch.

Cooper's book feels like it was published too hastily: There's an epilogue with updates on his stories - why not simply revise the main part of the book instead? There are a few factual errors, there's no index, and someone should tell Cooper that the possessive form of "it" is not "it's."

Written with energy and style, Marc Cooper?s book combines his lifelong passion for Las Vegas with a clear-eyed assessment of its downside. He?s a blackjack player who conveys his passion for the game. And he tells some wild and fascinating stories here ? from Ziggy, who?s been dealing blackjack for 30 years, to Randy at Harrah?s, who has made a science out of comping, to Andrea, who?s organizing a union of lapdancers. Cooper traces the changes in Las Vegas from the mob days of the 1950s to today?s cold corporate rule. Las Vegas, he argues, is the most democratic place in America ? anybody with money can play, regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation or anything else. In the end, he argues, it?s also ?the last honest place in America,? because the casinos make no secret of their goal: take your money and send you home. The book is loads of fun and truly smart in what it has to say about the white-hot heart of American popular culture today.

The writer does a good job of exploring the sides of the city that tourist seldom see, from advocates for the homeless to the personal lives of long-time casino workers. The book really hits its stride with the stories about the Honorable Oscar Goodman. However, as the book goes on, the writer's political bias becomes more and more prevalent with the last few chapters turning into nothing but a political rant against the GOP and its supporters. I would recommend the first 80 percent of the book, but after that, one could read the New York Times Opinion page and see the same tired demagoguery you can see here.

I stumbled onto this book while prepping for my 1st ever visit to Vegas. What we have here is an outstanding piece of 1st person journalism, story telling and ground level interviews with long time "core" Vegas denizens from a long time Vegas expert. The narrative is colorful, imaginative and thought provoking. I cannot over state how much I enjoyed this sage piece of story telling and biting social commentary about Vegas and indeed our nation as a whole. I'd kill for an autographed copy.....

I'm surprised reading the other reviews that comments about the political commentary have been so forgiving. My first clue as to the author's leanings came on page 15 where he comments on the Reagan recession of '81 (because Reagan had shaped a lot of federal policy by '81) and the Bush slump of 1990 and then refers to the "bubble-burst of a decade later" anonymously.

If your idea of a good read is leftist opinion, then you might enjoy this. As another reviewer commented, the factual history is available in nearly every book about Las Vegas - and mostly without political slants.

The author does have some interesting stories, and I thought he did a good job of justifying the title in the first few pages, but its charm is lost before the first third of the book is completed and overall the book is disappointing. It is also replete with spelling and grammatical errors - his editors really let him down.

It's too bad negative stars cannot be assigned.

When your subject is as protean and booming as Las Vegas, it's almost impossible to write a contemporary account of it that isn't hopelessly dated within a year or two of publication. This account, being a few years beyond its expiration date, holds up surprisingly well. Marc Cooper has written a loose, quick history of Las Vegas with the confessional, first-person style of a popular magazine article; he brushes lightly over political and aesthetic judgments, adds flavor with personal history, and prefers to summarize complex swaths of history with pithy, journalistic legerdemain. This is a fun, well-constructed little book that takes a sympathetic yet critical view of Las Vegas and its gambling ethos. My own experiences with the city tend to reinforce the seeming truth of Cooper's conclusions, i.e. that Las Vegas' thrilling promises are the selfsame hollow, spiritually desiccated engines that drive free markets and unfettered, greed-based capitalism. I await my next visit with expectant shame and gleeful self-loathing!

This is a fairly good hit and miss book on modern day Las Vegas. If you like Vegas, and want some snapshots of the modern incarnation thereof, this is a good book to read. There are some very interesting chapters (e.g. chapters on Oscar Goodman, and Binions) but there are also some so-so ones (e.g. homeless problem and transvesite stripper).

The writing is average but the book moves along at a good pace. It is a good airplane read but there are more interesting books on Vegas out there.

I came across this curio on the front desk of Barnes and Noble. Is he #%*%# kidding? I thought as I read the title. I started reading it; so absorbed that I figured I'd better buy it. Okay, so isn't Hunter S Thompson...exactly....its more like a MIke Davis's City of Quartz..or that strange Louis Theroux show that used to be on Bravo, full of oddballs...anyway, whatever, I loved it...