Customer Reviews

Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

A recent pleasure trip to Las Vegas turned into a business adventure. A walk down the strip suddenly became a research project to analyze the 'Vegas Experience'. In the midst of gathering artifacts, casual conversations with long-time locals (a construction traffic director and a security guard -- both over 15 year residents) revealed a theme central to their blue collar perspective of the city: a great respect for a man by the name of Steve Wynn.

Even his employees were faultlessly loyal to him. The curator of his art collection, a retired professor of art history, willingly suggested that Steve knew far more about art than even he.

These things I discovered all in less than 6 hours. I bought this book in the hopes of learning more about the man. Rare instances of Wynn-specific information could be found (only by skipping large chunks of irrelevant stories). This book smacks of irresponsible journalism.

It seems as if Mr. Smith became a journalist in Las Vegas because of a penchant for sensational stories. Akin to the phenomena of the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, this was the 2 degrees of Steve Wynn. John Smith took a number of sensational stories about events in Las Vegas and 'used' (also to be taken in a pejorative context) Steve Wynn as the thread to tie them together: guilt by association.

This was a thinly veiled attempt to write 'yet another' collection of mob stories (and other notable local mysterious events) while extorting Steve Wynn's name to secure new interest and sales.

I picture Mr. Smith being able to pull off a story portraying Mother Teresa as a devious opportunist. Mr. Smith's preposterous suppositions, called a book, might have been more appropriately titled: Running Scarred.

To find the story about Steve Wynn that I was looking for I may have to research and write it myself.

This book reads like what it is -- a quick 300 pages cranked out by a Vegas journalist familiar with the subject, commissioned by a publisher with a rich history of wallowing in libel. The preface admits as much. The publisher proudly proclaims on the book jacket, "Steve Wynn has already sued the author of this book and its publisher twice...." Indeed, the book leaves you wondering if getting sued by Steve Wynn was the whole point of this book, and is the only notoriety this tabloid volume would ever have received.

The author does himself and the reader a great disservice with his vague source citations. The book lists a great many books, interviews, and court records, but unfortunately these sources are listed as a group at the end of the book and aren't footnoted throughout the text. This makes it impossible to discern the specific source for any of the claims in the book.

Most disappointingly, the book fails to give a satisfying biography of its subject. Most of the more fascinating business maneuvers in Wynn's career are sadly glossed over, leaving you with more questions than answers. How exactly did Wynn make so much money buying and selling a small lot on the corner of Caesar's? Exactly how did Wynn leverage control of the Golden Nugget? This book won't really tell you. All too often you'll have to be happy with the answer than Wynn "knew somebody".

I kept up hope for this book (having already read other damning customer reviews), but ultimately I found this book disappointing. It seemed unnecessarily condemning of Wynn -- if he's a crook, the facts should speak for themselves, and the author needn't pursue it so doggedly. This book seems only to prove that Wynn works in a business with a lot of shady peers, and that Wynn doesn't seem to mind it. What a surprise.

Be warned. If you're looking for the exciting true story about how one man revitalized a city in decline and truly modernized Las Vegas through vision and guts (as I was), you won't find it here.

This is not a book about Steve Wynn transforming Las Vegas. This is a tabloid hit job written by a hostile author who has only one objective: link Steve Wynn to the mob.

As a Vegas history buff and as someone who's interested in Wynn, let me concede the author's objective up front: okay sure. Of course Wynn knows mafia wiseguys. How could he not? How could Wynn arrive as a young man in Vegas in the 60s and climb the ladder of influence without making mob contacts? The mob ran the town! The only real surprise as far as I'm concerned is how little Wynn seems to be involved with the mafia.

It's not that I'm a huge fan of Wynn, and all of Smith's secondhand accounts of Wynn behaving like a spoiled brat in private seem plausable, but since it's so obvious that the author is laser-focused on smearing Wynn, who's to say I'm getting a balanced account?

Whole chapters are devoted to little more than proving that Wynn is friends with this particular mob middleman, and on this particular day in 1982, they were SEEN HAVING LUNCH at this particular bistro. Though Wynn would always deny that the lunch took place, that's not the recollection of this busboy, who we've tracked down, who was ACTUALLY THERE. etc. etc. This is the book.

I was most looking forward to a retelling of the story of how Wynn built the Mirage. Where did he get the inspiration? How was it financed? How did he pitch it to investors? How did it get built? What were the expectations? How was it received when it opened? How did it change the texture of the strip? We get none of that. Instead, around two-thirds of the way through the book, I turn the page, and the Mirage is suddenly there, no discussion, and we're hearing about how one of the casino hosts may have had mob ties. Weak sauce.

Look, maybe what Smith needed was an opening chapter stating what he was trying to achieve. He could have made a case that although Wynn has transformed the city and done some great things, he's not completely squeaky-clean and has gone to great lengths to hide his association to organized crime. He could have made the moral case about taking money from the mob, and then said explicitly that the purpose of the book was to air out Wynn's dirty laundry and to take the man down a notch. What we get instead is an account of Wynn that purports to be evenhanded and journalistic but is truly only interested in smearing the man.

If the popular positive image of Wynn as humanitarian and brilliant entrepeneur who saved Vegas isn't wholly correct, then Smith's problem is that he goes directly to the opposite extreme, painting Wynn as a greedy, slimy criminal. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle? Maybe that's a book I would want to read.

I read this book with an open mind - my only prior knowledge of Steve Wynn was that he was the guy that built the Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio - the Mirage having ushered in the new era of modern luxury casino hotels in Vegas, and the $1.6 billion dollar Bellagio having upped the ante.
That said, I can see why Steve Wynn fought so hard to prevent this book from being released. Wynn sued the the original publisher and apparently helped force it into bankruptcy.
Any reader of this book will likely come away believing that:
1) Wynn rubbed elbows with mob figures, and may have served as a front man in some of his early dealings, before he accrued enough juice on his own,
2) Wynn leveraged his money-making capacity into a large measure of control over the local and state government and judiciary,
3) Wynn is an egomaniac,
4) Wynn kicks puppies....
You get the idea. Although the book makes a fair attempt at biography, its real purpose is to be an expose'. After 350 pages, it has the effect of beating a dead horse.
Wynn may indeed be all of those things, and certainly some of the things he's accused of could result in the loss of his Gaming License - although it seems Nevada is far too invested in him to ever let that happen. I wish there was a more balanced, well-rounded account of Steve Wynn's story out there.

I have always had a fascination with Steve Wynn's hotels and was looking to learn more about him when I came across this book. However, after reading Mr. Smith's depictions of Steve Wynn, the only thing I know for sure is that Smith REALLY doesn't like Steve Wynn. He criticized his every move, looking only at the negative "hidden agendas" associated with things such as the Mirage Dolphins and the Bellagio Art Gallery that the rest of the world is grateful that Steve Wynn brought to us. He repeatedly tries to link Wynn to the mob, but can never make a convincing arguement. He only briefly touches on the building of the hotels, their success, and fails to mention how the Mirage, Treasure Island, and the Bellagio were innovators in three different generations of Vegas theme hotels. Despite the books 2001 copyright date, is now about 9 years out of date. It pre-dates the MGM-Mirage merger, and even cites the Fremont Street Experience as being "set to open in late 1995." A postscript to the paperback edition attempts to bring it up to date, but it feels rushed, with misspelled words and inaccurate details.

Smith seems to have about 100 pages of relevant information, and 254 pages of stories that are so loosely linked to Wynn that at times I forgot who I was reading about. Smith goes so far as to imply that the deterioration of the UNLV basketball program is due to Steve Wynn deciding that Jerry Tarkanian projected the wrong image for the university and that he had to go.

In addition to the anti-Wynn take on every story, Smith illustrates some stories with details that aren't even accurate. He implies that opening the Bellagio was a huge risk because of the increased competition for the "well-heeled gambler market" with the opening of the Venetian, Paris and Mandalay Bay in the ensuing years since the Mirage opening, implying that the market Wynn was seeking was already captured by these hotels. This seems to be a viable argument, until you realize that those three hotels opened AFTER the Bellagio's October 1998 opening.

Smith's writing is often biased. He frequently quotes his employer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal positively, and their rival newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, negatively. Smith apparantly is not interested in providing an accurate portrayal of Wynn. Rather, he seems content try to pull every skeleton out of his closet, no matter how big of a stretch it is, to bring down Wynn's image. No wonder Wynn didn't want this book published.

If you are a Las Vegas history buff like me, there are a couple of interesting tidbits, but if you are looking for an accurate biography of Steve Wynn, this is not it.

I was hoping to learn a lot about the evolution of the Golden Nugget, the creation of the first megaresort in Vegas (the Mirage), as well as Wynn's super-gimmicky Treasure Island and how Bellagio took glitz to the highest level yet in Vegas. I instead read a mixed bunch of stories that seemed to have very little order. The book fails to follow any kind of progression, and is mostly about Wynn's associates' ties to organized crime. The Vegas casinos he built are only mentioned in passing, or when a controversy was involved.

John L. Smith seems more intent on criticizing Wynn's associations than actually telling the story of how he rebuilt Las Vegas. I came out of the book still wondering what he was thinking when Mirage opened, and how the public took to it.

If you want a REAL biography by John L. Smith, I highly recommend "No Limit", Smith's story of Bob Stupak. I read this one after "Running Scared" and was left wondering why Smith didn't write a similar book on Wynn. So if you're going to spend the money, buy the Stupak book-it's more informative and much more entertaining.

Having stayed at the Bellagio, I was intrigued to learn more about Steve Wynn and bought this book. Unfortunately, it is very poorly written, lacking organization, and even more lacking in factual citations.

Granted Steve Wynn is not an angel. But I thought that the allegations in this book should be backed up by adequate citations.

Finally, the book is so poorly written in terms of sentence structure that I just groaned every time I turned the page.

This book is misnamed! It should have been called "The Six Degrees of Steve Wynn" after the game where you can connect anyone in Hollywood to anyone else in six steps. Smith tells a series of stories about colorful characters and then tries to tie these people to Wynn. I didn't believe it for a minute. Too bad, because the truth would probably have been more interesting than this hatchet job

Las Vegas native John L. Smith provides an interesting perspective of the antics of Casino King, Steve Winn; a man who certainly has a shady past as well as some profound character flaws. Big deal; who doesn't have a few skeletons in their closet?

Wynn also has a charismatically savvy approach to running his empire and had to be very tough minded and pragmatic to even get the ball rolling; lost behind the negative bias the author has against this complex power broker, is the fact the guy had to have something going for him to build an empire like Wynn was able to construct. Were his ethics lacking? No doubt. Did he have vision and courage that very few could even dream about possessing? Certainly.

Smith does a remarkable job of researching the life and times of Steve Winn, but I think a more balanced approach to presenting the facts would've made the book even more compelling. The reader doesn't need to hear the author's personal spin on the guy he clearly despises. Perhaps he felt the need to sensationalize the reporting in order to sell more books. It's still a very good book; it would've been a great book if Smith could've presented the facts without offering his overly pious opinion about the subject. It almost made me want to root for Wynn as an "underdog".

I'll give him credit for building an empire worth writing a book about.

So damaging to his super clean image, Wynn drove the original publisher into bancruptcy and tried everything he could manage to keep this book out of circulation. Steve Wynn vs. the First Amendment (1st 1, Wynn 0).

Certainly did improve Vegas by leaps and bounds, but at what cost? Using public water to build his exclusive Shadow Creek golf course, buying art, jets and NY condos with stockholders money as the stock sank into takeover waters, untimately being shown the door by casino magnate Kirk Kerkorian. Once owned by MGM, things changed. The golf course was opened, the art, NY condo and jet all sold.

How does one man undermine Federal law to build a dolphin attraction? he is on film meeting with a known mobster who used his Atlantic City casino (Golden Nugget) to launder money, but can't seem to remember anything about it.

Fact: the son of a Bino Hall operator rises up to be one of the worlds leading casino developers and owners through some very shady associations. He influences Nevada politics as all people with money are able to, so no surprise there. The mob associations are clearly documented and associating with a convicted felon (Milken) is grounds for losing your gaming license, yet Wynn does so with impunity.

Wynn has brought some great changes to Las Vegas, but after reading the other sidie of the story, you have to ask yourself if the ends justify the means.

John L. Smith has done a great job with the facts surrounding Steve Wynn. Hat's off to him!