The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America

By Sally Denton and Roger Morris

Book Overview

Las Vegas--the name evokes images of divorce and dice, gangsters and glitz. But beneath it all is a sordid history that is much more insidious and far-reaching than ever imagined. The Money and the Power is the most comprehensive look yet at Las Vegas and its breadth of influence. Based on five years of intensive research and interviewing, Sally Denton and Roger Morris reveal the city's historic network of links to Wall Street, international drug traffickers, and the CIA. In doing so, they expose the disturbing connections amongst politicians, businessmen, and the criminals that harness these illegal activities. Through this lucid and gripping indictment of Las Vegas, Morris and Denton uncover a national ethic of exploitation, violence, and greed, and provide a provocative reinterpretation of twentieth-century American history. Now this neon maelstrom of ruthlessness and greed stands to not as an aberrant "sin city," but as a natural outgrowth of the corruption and worship of money that have come to permeate American life. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037540130X
• ISBN13: 9780375401305
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 2.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The dark side of the American Dream

Most Las Vegans hated this book. We are used to "exposes" written by journalists who fly in for a few weekends and then purport to deliver "the real truth" about what goes on in Vegas. Having lived here for twenty years, this book finally reveals what became apparent to me after the first five years of living here: Las Vegas and the casino industry have been influencing politics nationwide since at least the Kennedy administration...

Kudos to Sally Denton and Roger Morris

Authors Denton and Morris should be highly commended for having brought to the attention of the Nation through their painstaking research the long standing corrupt inner workings of Las Vegas, Nevada. At the very heart of this sociological phenomena is pure and unadulterated greed. Separating the sucker from his dollar and making him feel good at the same time is the cultural more that serves its masters, the mob in the past...

The history you don't know, and would never know

This book should be categorized as American History instead of being assigned to the social niche of Las Vegas gangster lore. The implied dynamic between uniquely American styles of Good and Evil is expressed in Miltonian terms, where Evil is more than simple badness, it also is endlessly energizing and fascinating. Denton and Morris propose what few Americans would willingly admit. The Mobs and sub Mobs in this country are...

Mirage in the sands

For the younger generation of American and tourists of the world, Las Vegas is a city of glitz and extravagance; however, underneath all the light, noise and the make believe world of casino there lies a deeper truth."The Money and the Power" by the husband and wife team of Sally Denton and Roger Morris tells the story of the true Las Vegas that sprung up in the sands of southern Nevada after WWII.The book tells the story...

Using the Juice

"Sixty years ago, Las Vegas was a gritty, wind-whipped crossroads of faded [houses of ill-repute] . . . and honky-tonks with stuttering neon." "It is a city in the middle of nowhere that is the world's most popular destination." The city is all about "diversion, entertainment, money, sex, escape, deliverance, another chance, a last chance, and another life for a few hours, days, forever." From these threads, the authors...