Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century [Paperback]

Hal Rothman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415926130 | ISBN-13: 978-0415926133 | Publication Date: April 20, 2003 | Edition: New Ed

Like the Emerald City, Las Vegas glitters brightly in the vast Nevada desert, a haven for refugees from the ordinary America. A hip, iconic playground that exports nothing, it nonetheless earns billions from consumer services alone As other cities try to mirror its success, and huge respectable corporations like Coca-Cola invest in a piece of the pie, the very traits that have ostracized Las Vegas in the past - hedonism, money worship and permissiveness have today made it America's fastest growing urban centre. From the gambling-driven, mob-run Sin City of the 1940s to the corporatization of the Strip as a respectable family entertainment centre after the 1970s, Las Vegas has shown incredible economic resilience and adaptability. This full account of America's new dream capital, this book shows how Las Vegas gambled on the post-industrial service economy, well before the rest of the country knew it was coming, and won.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this thoughtful study, Rothman (history, Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas) provides a detailed history of a uniquely American city. The subject of urban planning and design is enriched by Rothman's focus on the social history of the city, including its architecture, economics, government, labor issues, transportation, environmental policy, and immigration situation. Rothman argues that Las Vegas survives by responding to whatever source of prosperity is available, whether it is the U.S. military or the gaming industry. In Las Vegas's malleability, he sees the future of all U.S. cities, along with attendant issues of social isolation and environmental abuse. His empathetic exploration of working-class Latino lives is especially rewarding. Recommended for academic and public library collections emphasizing urban studies, American history, and the Latino experience. Paula R. Dempsey, DePaul Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a frequent commentator on the local culture, presents a thorough study of Las Vegas, a city with about as quirky a history as any in the U.S. Though Las Vegas was once just a whistle- stop on the L.A. railroad, loose regulations on adult pleasures and a lock on water access brought in Mob "shoebox money" to finance this paradise of vice in the desert. It was never a secret that Vegas was a syndicate-run town, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as city and state authorities looked the other way, the money poured in, but it always remained tainted. Then Howard Hughes bought half the town, and legislation opened up to allow free corporate access. The mobsters were practically run out of town, opening the way for the theme-park-like atmosphere that pervades today. Rothman gets inside the psyche of the Vegas mystique, where luxury is affordable to all, everyone is a star, and entertainment is king like nowhere else. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; New Ed edition (April 20, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415926130
• ISBN-13: 978-0415926133
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Neon Metropolis, October 28, 2002

By 

Alan Hess (Troy, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

An insightful work. Neon Metropolis is an essential antidote to the many critics who fly to Las Vegas for a quick visit, and leave with biases undisturbed and nothing useful to say.

What sets Rothman apart? He combines academic investigation with close observation, over time, of how this resort town is turning into one of the most successful and popular cities in the United States.

Key to the success of this book is the fact that Rothman lives in this city, where he teaches history at UNLV. He has lived in the brand new subdivisions which excite the derision of tourist-critics who cannot fathom that such planned communities could be anything other than hideously pathological. Rothman, on the other hand, has watched these communities grow with time. His children have played in the nascent sports leagues; he has ridden the mass transit; he has seen how people carve a real community to raise families - for two or three generations now - out of unconventional and even unlikely material. He has tracked political movements and talked to his neighbors at Starbucks. And while these communities may not be perfect - Rothman has an academic's balanced powers of evaluation - they do work. This information is of wider interest as well; Rothman discusses the many ways that Las Vegas is a prototype in developing the emerging urban-suburban cities that we find across the nation.

This book reveals an intriguing urban landscape. We learn how the earlier Las Vegas of the Mob shaped not only its gambling economy, but created its hospitals, churches and other institutional urban infrastructure. We then learn how the Las Vegas of Wall Street (after Hilton, Holiday Inn and other corporations became the major stakeholders) built the foundations for the enormous growth in size, prestige and influence over the last twenty years.

Along the way we see how the many threads of a real city - unions, immigrants, a strong middle-class economy, civic and business leaders, and the city's self-conceptions - have been woven together. Rothman helpfully compares Las Vegas to Detroit's growth along with another booming new industry earlier in the century.

This book is a dose of well-researched reality which should be read by anyone concerned with the health and direction of American cities.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life behind the Strip, February 29, 2004

By 

saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century (Paperback)

Although the author covers the history of Las Vegas, this book is mainly about its current growing pains. The county's rapid growth has made it impossible for schools and other institutions to keep pace with population, and the social fabric of Las Vegas is frail because so many residents are recent arrivals. Regional planning is a joke because the local government is under the thumb of developers, and no one in government wants to do anything that would raise taxes or raise housing costs. The end result is a place where even a hotel chambermaid can enjoy a pleasant middle-class lifestyle. Rothman, a history professor at UNLV, spices his book with first-person stories, such as how a friendship with a family on the other side of I-15 gradually fell apart as the driving time to visit them became longer and longer.

This is a far superior book than Rothman's "The Grit Beneath the Glitter," which was a collection of essays. However, the flaw of both books is Rothman's over-the-top praise of organized labor. Granted, unions have provided many Vegas workers with a high standard of living, but it's really hard to believe (as Rothman claims) that employers are grateful to be unionized and grateful for the rule that the union - not the employer - chooses whom to hire.

I was surprised that another reviewer criticized Rothman for being an overly optimistic booster, because I thought the tone of the book was rather negative. When I've visited Las Vegas, I've always thought it would be an awful place to live, and Rothman's book confirms my impression. (Of course, Las Vegas residents probably think I'm nuts for living in Saskatchewan.) This would be an excellent book for any tourist who has a serious interest in what happens beyond the strip.

Also, many of the pathologies of Las Vegas are coming soon to a city near you. One of the book's more memorable passages is that, based on demographic projections, the future consists of latino service employees waiting on cranky old white people, which is hardly healthy for the fabric of society.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Las Vegas Economically Malleable? NOT!, March 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century (Paperback)

One of the central theses of this book is that Las Vegas has miraculously "adopted" to the changing economy and has thus prospered more than other major U.S. cities by taking advantage of emerging social and economic trends. The author imagines that Las Vegas is some sort of highly malleable economic miracle machine that rolls with the punches, survives and prospers hugely while other places dependant on more recession-sensitive industries such as technology, manufacturing, and medical research ebb and flow. What nonsense!

Las Vegas, and to an even greater extent its cradle of growth Clark County, have never adopted to ANY emerging economic trend, unless you count the undesirable trend of industrial-scale gaming penetration together with huge resort casinos into every corner of the city, including formerly-protected residential neighborhoods. Quite the contrary, the city has never done anything other than repackage marketing themes that sell gambling and an increasingly aggressive sex industry, advertisements for which pervade just about available public space one views from an automobile. Hide you eyes, kids!

Las Vegas' economic success is certainly not based on economic malleability and adaptability. It is based on 30 years worth of cheap housing, abundant low wage jobs, weak consumer protection, and almost non-existent restraints on development of raw land. Throw in a state and a county government run for the benefit of the gaming industry and developers and voila! The "city of the future", is a vast wasteland of cookie-cutter housing tracts, endless strip malls, and a urban facade often described as "franchise architecture". This is not my vision of a desirable future. And increasingly, many observers in southern Nevada are beginning to realize that Las Vegas is rapidly becoming unlivable due to the city's rush into this future.

For those who have not moved to this place yet, let's hope that Las Vegas is not the future of American urban life, but will remain what is has always been: an aberration maintained solely by unrestrained growth and legalized gambling.