The Grit Beneath the Glitter Tales from the Real Las Vegas [Paperback]

The Grit Beneath the Glitteris the first real look at the new Las Vegas from the inside. In it, long-time residents as well as professionals reflect on the transformation of one of the fastest-growing and most famous cities on earth, yet one about which relatively little is known. They offer a lively and compelling portrait of the other side of Las Vegas: the people and institutions that support the glitter of the gaming and entertainment industry. Examining a range of topics--from the city's commercial history, labor conditions, and environmental problems to an analysis of the famous lights of the Strip--the contributors uncover the contradictions between the illusion and the reality of the city, the seam between fantasy and the life it masks. The essays in this collection explore the world that employees experience when they enter gaming palaces from an employee entrance in a back parking lot rather than through the scripted doors of casino/hotel palaces. They take readers into the neighborhoods where 1.4 million Americans now live, attend school, eat dinner, and go to work.

Hal Rothmanis Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.Among his books areDevil's Bargains(1998),The Greening of a Nation?(1998), andNeon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century(due out in 2002).Mike Davisis Professor of History at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author ofCity of Quartz(1992) andEcology of Fear(1998), among other books.

Rothman and Davis have given us not only the gritty, often ugly reality behind the nation's brightest lights but also the touching human drama that is the essence of our most emblematic and enigmatic city. From the grind joints of Glitter Gulch to the mammoth theme hotels of the twenty-first-century Strip, this collection blends marvelously the best old-fashioned scholarship and investigative reporting with the finest postló%