Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-first CenturyPsychology Press, 2003 - 340 ページ Praise for the Previous Edition (0 415 92612 2): ...lively and provocative...this book will teach you something startling on nearly every page... --The New York Times Book Review Like the Emerald City, Las Vegas glitters brightly in the vast Nevada desert, a haven for refugees from ordinary America. A hip, iconic, playground that exports nothing, it nonetheless earns billions from consumer services alone -- gambling, hotels, gaming, and entertainment. It is, historian Hal Rothman argues, the quintessential city of the future. As other cities try to mirror its success and huge, respectable corporations like Coca-Cola invest in a piece of the pie, the very traits that have ostracized Las Vegas in the past -- hedonism, money worship, and permissiveness -- have today made it America's fastest growing urban center. From the gambling-driven, mob-run Sin City of the 1940s to the corporatization of the Strip as a respectable family entertainment center after the 1970s, Las Vegas has shown incredible economic resilience and adaptability. The first full account of America's new dream capital, Neon Metropolis brilliantly shows how Las Vegas gambled on the post-industrial service economy well before the rest of the country knew it was coming, and won. |
目次
1 Inventing Modern Las Vegas | 3 |
Entertainment in the Malleable Metropolis | 33 |
The New Service Economy | 63 |
4 Freedom and Limits in a City of Pleasure | 89 |
Filling Las Vegas | 121 |
5 The New Emigrant Trail | 123 |
6 The Face of the Future | 149 |
Latinos in the New City | 175 |
Building a New City | 205 |
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多く使われている語句
African American airport American society become Bellagio Bramlet Bugsy Siegel built Caesars Palace California capital cars casino Circus Circus city's Clark County construction corporate cost created Culinary Union culture decade desert district downtown economy entertainment federal Flamingo Fremont Street Experience fund gambling gaming Green Valley growth Henderson immigrants industry kids labor Las Vegas Valley Las Vegas's Latino living looked MGM Grand middle class million Mirage nation needed neighborhoods newcomers offered opened owners Paris Las Vegas park percent political population problems restaurants retirees road Siegel Siegfried and Roy social southern Nevada space Steve Wynn Strip suburban Summa Corporation Summerlin Sun City thousand tortoise town traffic UNLV Vegans Vegas became Vegas Valley Vegas's visitors wages Webb West workers Wynn's York
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xviii ページ - At the same time. American society underwent a remarkable shift. The old rules and standards were tossed out. and new ones. defined through media. evolved in a world without clear cultural distinctions. In this new world. experience has become currency and entertainment has become culture. Experience is what Americans trade. how they define themselves. Entertainment is the storehouse of national values. Authentic and inauthentic have blurred. It's not that people can't tell the difference — they...
xviii ページ - best assortment of shopping on the planet." Wynn proclaimed. and with amenities like the $35O million art collection. remarkable restaurants. and superior drinks— women swear that the Bellagio makes the best Cosmopolitan anyone's ever tasted — the attraction was obvious. Wynn made his reputation on service. and there was simply no place anywhere like the Bellagio. The ante in the Las Vegas poker game had become astronomical. Only the boldest of the bold could afford a seat at the table. In the...
xi ページ - World Famous Las Vegas Strip," on New Year's 2000, revealed the triumph of post-industrial capitalism, information and experience, over its industrial predecessor. Billions of dollars from the world financial markets had been fashioned into the long line of multi-colored casinos that lit the night sky. This spectacle of postmodernism, a combination of space and form in light and dark that...
xiii ページ - Vegas blends entertainment, experience, and opportunity for a broad swath of the American and world public. It fulfills the desires of the baby boomers, reflects the abundance that they take for granted and the selfish indulgence, the hedonistic libertarianism, that is the legacy of the American cultural revolution of the 196Os.
xxvii ページ - It offers the most fully developed version of a low-skilled, high-wage service economy in the nation and possibly the world. The power of unions in southern Nevada has made Las Vegas the "Last Detroit...