Award-winning journalist Earley (Circumstantial Evidence, 1995, etc.) takes a long, hard look at the rejuvenated Las Vegas casino industry, from the new breed of Disney-influenced megacasinos to the still-seamy underbelly of need, misconduct, and loss. Earley is a heavyweight reporter, and he gained unprecedented access to the casinos—primarily the oft-beleaguered Circus-Circus conglomerate’so this book is densely detailed. He first reviews the bad old days of Vegas, when mobsters who built their own casinos with Teamsters Pension Funds in the 1950s were forced out by federal pressure by the 1970s, paving the way for mass mergers that both reduced the cash skimming, tax evasion, and brutality, and eradicated most components of the Las Vegas of Hunter Thompson and the Rat Pack. Earley’s central narrative concerns the decades of corporate intrigue that attended the rise of supercasino ventures like Circus-Circus, originally a —grind joint,— versus Steve Wynn’s —high-roller— establishments, like the Mirage. Beginning with Jay Sarno, a lecherous impresario who ushered in the contemporary aesthetic with Caesar’s Palace and the grotesque cement —big top— of Circus-Circus—then within eight years lost control of both—Earley documents the backstabbing and soul-selling that overtook the first generation of megacasino executives. This grim tale is interspersed with Studs Turkel’style personal narratives of casino denizens, most of them revealing and poignant. A widow visits Las Vegas to recall her deceased husband; a teenage prostitute manages to graduate from blackjack-dealer’s school; casino employees struggle with cynicism and conscience. Also more compelling than the corporate swashbuckling are chapters succinctly examining the nitty-gritty of high-tech casino operation: surveillance, security, anticheating measures, and the odd comforts demanded by gamblers. Given that Las Vegas’s latest incarnation appears to be an unstoppable cultural juggernaut, a timely and deft examination of the mechanisms, individuals, and corporate culture that transformed the once risquÇ pursuit of gambling into the glamorized, mainstreamed fantasy of —gaming.—
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2000
ISBN: 0-553-09502-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
It took 14 years to build and it cost 15 million dollars and the lives of 20 workmen. Like the Atlantic cable and the Suez Canal it was a gigantic embodiment in steel and concrete of the Age of Enterprise. McCullough's outsized biography of the bridge attempts to capture in one majestic sweep the full glory of the achievement but the story sags mightily in the middle. True, the Roeblings, father and son who served successively as Chief Engineer, are cast in a heroic mold. True, too, the vital statistics of the bridge are formidable. But despite diligent efforts by the author the details of the construction work — from sinking the caissons, to underground blasting, stringing of cables and pouring of cement — will crush the determination of all but the most indomitable reader. To make matters worse, McCullough dutifully struggles through the administrative history of the Brooklyn Bridge Company which financed and contracted for the project with the help of the Tweed Machine and various Brooklyn bosses who profited handsomely amid continuous allegations of kickbacks and mismanagement of funds. He succeeds in evoking the venality and crass materialism of the epoch but once again the details — like the 3,515 miles of steel wire in each cable — are tiresome and ultimately entangling. Workmanlike and thorough though it is, McCullough's history of the bridge has more bulk than stature.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1972
ISBN: 0743217373
Page Count: 652
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972
IN THE NEWS
In the latest leg of an idiosyncratic intellectual journey, Pellegrino looks at the stories of the Old Testament through the lenses of genetics, paleontology, and archaeology. Pellegrino (Unearthing Atlantis, 1990, etc.) has an autodidact's omnivorous curiosity to match his high-flying imagination. In this new hodgepodge, he expands on the speculations he put forward in his previous expedition into antiquity, in which he hypothesized that the volcano-buried Minoan city of Thera was the inspiration for the legendary Atlantis. Here he conjectures that when an eruption in the second millennium b.c. obliterated the Minoan civilization, its long-distance effects may have been responsible for the plagues of Egypt and the Aegean diaspora that brought the Philistines to Canaan. He also annexes other theories having to do with the contentious ``Mitochondrial Eve'' hypothesis (based on mitochondrial DNA research, it theorizes that genetic the mother of us all lived between 250,000 and 140,000 b.c.) and the Ark of the Covenant's wanderings. Using diverse scientific sources and historical perspectives—Sumerian clay tablets, Egyptian steles, the writings of Herodotus, and, naturally, the Bible—he ``telescopes'' anthropological and archaeological theories to fit Biblical myths like those of Noah and Nimrod, compressing patterns of history into oral tradition's legends. With a natural sense of storytelling, he blends theories of antiquity with the adventures of field work: He is best describing the modern difficulties of conducting digs in Gaza, Jericho, and Iraq (where he radically situates the Biblical Cities of the Plain destroyed by God's wrath). There is, however, a good deal of padding by this accidental archaeologist: reconstructed dialogue, digression, repetition, and flights of fancy that leave solid ground far below. For all its interdisciplinary breadth and originality, this reads like a beery breeze-shooting session with a college prof. (16 pages of b&w drawings, maps, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40006-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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