Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: The Many Faces of Las Vegas 1
4. PART I. IMAGE AND REALITY
5. Scripting Las Vegas: Noir Naïfs, Junking Up, and the New Strip 17
6. Las Vegas of the Mind: Shooting Movies in and about Nevada 30
7. Discordant Infrastructure 59
8. PART II. NUTS AND BOLTS
9. Growth, Services, and the Political Economy of Gambling in Las Vegas, 1970–2000 73
10. Lighting Las Vegas: Electricity and the City of Glitz 99
11. Build It and the Water Will Come 115
12. The Social Costs of Rapid Urbanization in Southern Nevada 126
13. Rise to Power: The Recent History of the Culinary Union in Las Vegas 145
14. Class Struggle in Oz 176
15. PART III. VOICES
16. “Squeezing the Juice Out of Las Vegas”: Reflections On Growing Up in Smalltown, USA 187
17. I Didn’t Know Anybody Lived There 195
18. How I Became a Native 208
19. Inside the Glitter: Lives of Casino Workers 214
20. PART IV. SHAPING LIFE
21. “She Works Hard for Her Money”: A Reassessment of Las Vegas Women Workers, 1945–1985 243
22. The Racial Cauldron 260
23. Inside Jean 268
24. Looking into a Dry Lake: Uncovering the Women’s View of Las Vegas A Film Journal 291
25. PART V. FROM PARIAH TO PARADIGM
26. Colony, Capital, and Casino: Money in the Real Las Vegas 307
27. Who Puts the “Sin” in “Sin City” Stories? Girls of Grit and Glitter in the City of Women 335
28. Nevada Goes Global: The Foreign Gaming Rule and the Spread of Casinos 347
29. Canto: Las Vegas 363
30. Contributors 377
31. Index 379