by Steve Fischer
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Product Description
Vegas like you've never seen, tales you've never heard -- until now. Sizzing, behind-the-scenes stories about the men, the Mob, movie stars, and missing money that made '50s and '60s Vegas such a hot spot in the Nevada desert. “On opening night at the Cal-Neva Lodge, Sinatra's guests included Marilyn Monroe, Joe Kennedy and his son, John F. Kennedy. Also there that weekend were Johnny Roselli and Sam "Momo" Giancana. Uninvited and hiding up in the hills around the casino lodge was an FBI surveillance team with long-range lenses . . . From the chapter Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva Lodge "On Sept 22, 1953, the Riviera Hotel was approved, the name was changed from the Casa Blanca to the Riviera just before this meeting . . . and the list of newly approved owners included Harpo (Arthur) Marx, movie star, comedian; his brother, Gummo (Milton) Marx, comedian" . . . From the chapter Does the Riviera Still Kill Its Executives? ”The Tropicana partners included Rosselli’s bosses in Chicago: Sam Giancana, Paul Rica, Camel Humphries, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Carlos Marcello . . . Fronting for the Chicago Outfit was Ben Jaffe. He owned the giant Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami, and also owned a little insurance company in Indiana” . . . From the chapter Frank Costello Builds the Tropicana "In every showroom in Las Vegas, there are certain inviolate rules. Rule Number One – the headliners go for 60 minutes. Not 64. Those extra 4 minutes represent 4 minutes of lost revenue on the casino floor . . . Then Deano came out on stage with his signature, "Who are all you people, and what are you doing in my room?"– and so started the two and a half hours of the Rat Pack Show!" From the chapter Coffee Shop Stories: Rat Pack and the Sands 21 stories packed with intrigue and mystery, a thoroughly research book, vintage photos.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Good book about mob life, 2008-05-08
I enjoyed reading this book. The author revealed factual information about early life in Vegas. It was interesting reading about the mob with a humorous bent to their shenanigans.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Vegas, 2008-05-05
Interesting stories and an easy read in terms of getting through the book quickly but the stories don't seem to follow any sort of order or sequence of events. Would have been much better had it included a list of characters because there's a lot of jumping around w/ the same people and if there was a chronological sequence of events or some other similar structure so that it would have been easier to follow.
Did enjoy learning just how deep the mob was involved in building Las Vegas.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A bit light on facts, 2008-04-25
This book was recommended to me by a bookstore in Vegas. They didn't have it in stock so I purchased it from Amazon on my return to Australia.
While I found this book very informative and factual, it is rather repetitive at times and I found myself asking, "didn't I just read that?" It is apparent in some sections that the information is fairly scrambled and does not flow.
This book is more or less a summary of the days when the mob ran Vegas, as opposed to a detailed account of this era.
Of note, even though the book contains 240 pages, the font is somewhat larger than most books and can be read in a matter of hours.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone who is after a brief run down on the mob and the days they ran Vegas.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A fun, behind-the-scenes view of how Vegas was built., 2008-03-10
While you can take many of these Las Vegas mob stories with a grain of salt, Steve Fischer nonetheless delivers them in such a way that they simply must be believed, if only for the nostalgic romance of them. Even if some of the more colorful accounts are embellished a bit (and I have no proof that they are, but the cynic in me can't help but think so), the audio version of this book has been a fantastic addition to my collection. Fischer's thick accent and convincing delivery are enough to make me feel like I was there too.
Note that in addition to reading the text itself, Fischer often interrupts himself with side notes and reminders to the listener, a practice that you quickly get used to and grow to appreciate, especially when he jumps around through periods of time. And while you can frequently hear him turning the pages of his manuscript and his side notes occasionally revert to unapologetic plugs for an upcoming book, the presentation remains well-paced, well-read and utterly entertaining. I've really, really enjoyed this one.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great slice of Las Vegas history, 2008-01-04
Steve Fischer has created a literary trip back to Vegas in its classic era... and what a strange trip it is! The Mob played by their own rules and the lore of Sin City is seldom more compellingly recalled than in this book of stories by a man who carries the town's history in his bones. Some of the tales are funny as hell while others are downright chilling. A very good book for those who want to know how Vegas used to be.
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