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| Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century | 
 enlarge | Author: Hal Rothman
Publisher: Routledge
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy Used: $4.59
You Save: $30.41 (87%)
New (19) Used (19) from $4.59
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 992294
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0415926122
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.3135
EAN: 9780415926126
ASIN: 0415926122
Publication Date: February 22, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Former library copy with all the usual markings, stamps and stickers. Pages in very good condition with exception of edge wear. Great book at a great price!!!
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 15 | | NEXT » |
Very Readable Chronicle of a City's Growth March 24, 2008
As a casual visitor to the Las Vegas strip, I found myself wondering what was going on behind all the glitz of the casino hotels. I wanted to understand the cost of the fantasy. After reading Rothman's book, I feel like I have a better grasp. It answered a lot of questions I had as I was cruising down Las Vegas Boulevard. Where does all the money come from? Where does it go? What is the environmental cost of all the water in the fountains? How well are all these blackjack dealers, cocktail waitresses, cooks and housekeepers treated?
More of a historical and geographical chronicle than a sociological report, the book tries to present a very organic view of the city by following the history of its growth. I want to make it clear that this is a book with a very specific topic: how Las Vegas became a tumbleweed railroad town to a metropolis with a culture and economy rivaling Phoenix and even L.A. There are about 60 pages devoted to the casino strip, its former mob days and its modern showiness, but the vast majority of the book is devoted to the more mundane but crucial issues that prove that Las Vegas is a real urban center.
The book is divided into three sections: a section about the economic, cultural and political incentives for people to move to Las Vegas, a section about the types of people who have moved to Las Vegas by the tens of thousands each year in the 1990s, and a final section devoted to the environmental, geographical and social impact that Las Vegas's hyperactive growth has caused. Chief topics are the casino economy, libertarian politics, labor unions, retirement communities, illegal immigrants, water rights, highways and homeowners associations.
If the whole picture of Las Vegas is what interests you, not just the intrigue and vice, you will find this book both informative and pleasant to read. Though some of the topics I listed seem pretty mundane, they are presented with a lot of emotional investment. Rothman compares in this way to the pop sociology writers, like Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. Keep in mind, though, that one of the reasons that this book is so entertaining is that it is just an overview; you might feel that it doesn't go quite as much into detail as you would like at some points. But that's the case with any 320 page book dealing with such a vast topic.
I would agree with another reviewer in saying that a major flaw in this book is its writing. While it's clear that Rothman writes in plain, understandable English and writes with much better-than-average energy, zest and emotional insight, the book is plagued with missing words, awkward phrasings and the occasional completely incomprehensible sentence. It could have stood to be edited a bit more.
On the other hand, these mistakes, though more frequent than in most books I have read, are not frequent enough to really make that much of a difference. They're more a noticeable curiosity than they are anything frustrating.
To sum up:
I give this book 4/5 as a history and urban studies book, for being both a pleasure to read (a huge challenge for history books) and informative. It is recommended for those who are questing for true insight into the realities of modern Las Vegas and the American city. If you're only interested in reading about the city's gambling, mobsters, burlesque shows and buffets, either borrow the book to read only the first 60 pages, or look elsewhere.
 Rothman hits but also misses October 22, 2007
Rothman does a nice job pointing out what has proven to be the very effective economic engine of the modern American service industry. When organized labor meets the lucrative tourist industry, wages for folks with a high school education can indeed be quite solid. For those here that doubt the role of organized, unionized labor, simply compare the economy of southern Nevada to southern Louisiana. While New Orleans has a strong gaming industry, wages are bad, and poverty profoundly rampant. On this point, Professor Rothman is correct: Las Vegas, with it's robust mix of service economy and unionizatin, could point the way to the future.
Professor Rothman does, however, tend to gloss over the nagging social ills inherent with the gaming industry. In particular, Nevada has spectacular suicide and divorce rates, sky-high spousal abuse and very, very high teenage dropout rates (comparable to inner city neighborhoods in east coast cities). He also misses the biggest problem of all: chronic gambling addiction among many casino workers and the wholesale, even arrogant, failure of the gaming industry to address the problem.
It is somewhat ironic that Rothman, who does indeed have a background in environmental history, ignores many of Las Vegas' environmental issues. The vast sprawl of Las Vegas may well NOT be sustainable in an age of skyrocketing oil prices; a large percentage of Las Vegas visitors still arrive by car from Southern California, relying on an increasingly clogged 4 lane interstate (I-15). The city itself relies on just one pipeline to bring gasoline to the valley from southern California and local fuel prices are threatening to reach dangerously historic highs this year.
Rothman is also blithely unconcerned about water. Climate Change is predicted to make the US southwest far drier than it is today. Indeed, the region is currently suffering under a years-long drought that has taken reservoirs to insidiously low levels. Both Lake Meade, just an hour's drive south of the city, and Lake Powell, between central Arizona and central Utah, are at dangerous, historically low levels. Despite extremely strict residential water usage restrictions in southern Nevada, lack of water could well derail growth in the Las Vegas metropolitan area within the next decade, particularly if the current drought persists.
Rothman's anecdotes often miss serious underlying sociological issues. Sure, you can find stories of community in virtually any city or neighborhood, but Rothman's often cutsy anecodotes miss the big picture. The state suffers an intense brain drain. Many of it's young residents leave state to attend college and if they receive a master's degree or higher, very few will ever return. The city is profoundly transient, and the exaggerated suburban sprawl of the new "instant city" variety has its drawbacks.
The average tenure of home ownership is very brief in Las Vegas: even residents who live their entire lives in the city tend to move once or twice to flee declining neighborhoods. Shiny new (but rapidly and poorly constructed) suburban tracts fall from middle to working class and even into crime-ridden lower working class neighborhoods in 25 years or less. Rings of impoverished, aging inner suburbs are causing grief for city planners as the middle class flees a growing core of decaying housing for newer digs in the outer sprawl. In eastern cities, historic buildings and brownstones in the inner core drew a new generation of college educated adults willing to restore and rediscover neighborhoods. Cookie-cutter, cinder block nightmare neighborhoods, thrown together by careless contractors in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are less easily renovated or rediscovered.
Finally, Rothman misses the macro-economic taxation issues. Because Nevada relies almost solely on the gaming and sales taxes to run the state, the state is extremely vulnerable should a real recession hit.
Rothman, ultimately, misses as much as he hits. The landbreaking sociological study of the modern gaming town, sadly, remains to be written.
One Man's View May 14, 2007
I like the way Rothman writes. I also recognize that this is one man's view of how Las Vegas became what it is. I think anyone asking what happened to unions should read this book.
Good (if biased) information but poor writing style September 21, 2004
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Overall, Neon Metropolis presents an overview of the history and sociology of modern Las Vegas. Rothman's focus is on modern Las Vegas, so readers looking for more of a straightforward history starting before the twentieth century may be disappointed. This book is best for readers looking to understand the development of the modern casino and entertainment industry or for readers looking to understand how Las Vegas functions behind-the-scenes as a modern city.
The book not only describes the development of gambling and entertainment along the Las Vegas Strip but also describes the immigration of people to Las Vegas and the problems caused by Las Vegas's high growth rate and desert location. Special attention is given to such simple things as the development of city infrastructure and the use of Hispanic immigrant labor, things that would otherwise be ignored in the history of any other city. Rothman thereby gives his readers a pespective into how both the casino industry developed and how the city as a whole developed. Rothman is also unafraid to critically analyze the problems facing Las Vegas as a modern day city, although his positions on some issues (such as labor unions) are clearly biased.
Aside from questionable biased viewpoints on some issues, Neon Metropolis suffers from being written with poor English. Rothman's largest problem is that he writes sentences that are too long to be readable. It is sometimes difficult to determine what some sentences are trying to say. Rothman also likes to use very bad metaphors and cliches. It seems as though he is trying to be funny or clever, but instead he simply sounds trite. Additional organizational problems and grammatical errors further hinder this book's readability.
In summary, I would recommend this book to readers who seriously wants to understand Las Vegas. For casual readers, however, I would recommend passing on this book unless the author produces a new version that includes some serious revisions.
 correction of stupid review May 24, 2004
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Boy, I'll tell you: there's nothing worse than a reviewer who either didn't read or can't understand a book. Neon Metroplis does not argue that Las Vegas is economically malleable at all. It says that Las Vegas thrives as a tourist town because the image it presents is malleable - that it can change to meet the trends. All you have to do is remember the so-called family era - with theme parks etc. - of a decade ago and look at the ads today: "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," to see that this is true.Neon Metropolis also says that Las Vegas is the one horse in a one-horse state; as anyone who followed 2003's tax debacle in Nevada could see, this is ever more true. Las Vegas' problems are real and Neon Metropolis is a lot more conversant with them than these two reviews suggest. This is by far the best book on Las Vegas.
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