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Suburban Xanadu FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Publication Date: July 2003 New Author Takes Fresh Look at Casino Industry "Suburban Xanadu tells the fascinating story of the rise of casinos on the Las Vegas Strip- something that has been much needed… Dave Schwartz shows us that the popularity of casinos is no accident... He approaches the topic with intelligence and thoughtfulness, and the result is a book that does a great job of explaining why Americans like casino resorts so much." --Steve Wynn, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Wynn Resorts Suburban Xanadu The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond David G. Schwartz In his new book, Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip (Routledge, Trade Paperback Original, ISBN: 0-415-93557-1, $22.95 [$34.95 Canada]) David G. Schwartz of the University of Nevada Las Vegas tears down myth to create an honest, accurate history of the casino industry. While the history of Las Vegas-style casino resorts is relatively brief, dating only to the 1940s, these institutions are fascinating subjects for historical study. Working from the assumption that the men and women who operated and vacationed in Strip casinos were “more or less rational people acting to maximize their profit,” Schwartz examines the conditions that led to the first flowering of the casino industry outside of Las Vegas in the late 1940s and explains how a variety of factors aided the growth of the Strip through the 1990s. When other states tried to use casinos to provide economic stimuli, however, they often ignored the fact that casino resorts were specific adaptations to the conditions of a suburban strip in an isolated city, and not blueprints for urban redevelopment. Schwartz, acclaimed by Casino Design magazine as “gaming’s leading historian, rewrites the standard history of casinos, bringing to light many previously ignored facts about the resorts of the Strip and elsewhere. Some of Schwartz’s major points include the following: “neither casino operators nor patrons are fundamentally deviant, but are in fact more or less rational people acting to maximize their profit and vacation value, respectively.” (2) As they have been developed on the Strip, casino resorts are incompatible with classic urban downtowns (6-7) The popularity of illegal urban slots in the 1940s doomed them to extinction in the 1950s, and paved the way for the growth of the Las Vegas Strip as a vacation destination. (22) The first casino resort on the Strip, the Hotel El Rancho Vegas, opened in April 1941, over five years before the more famous Flamingo. (34) The first themed Strip casino, the western Last Frontier, opened in 1942. (44) Hollywood restaurateur Billy Wilkerson, not the infamous Bugsy Siegel, was the actual founder of the Flamingo Hotel. (52) The anti-gambling campaigns of Estes Kefauver and others in the early 1950s actually boosted Las Vegas by eliminating the competition. (72) Syndicate ownership, not sole proprietorship, was the norm for early casinos. (104) Casinos had strict accounting procedures and controls as far back as the 1940s, long before the so-called “corporate takeover” in the 1970s. (114) Conventions, not its reputation as “Sin City,” made Las Vegas a leading destination in the 1960s. (134) The rebirth of casino theming with Caesars Palace in 1966 was rooted in fiscal necessity and made solid economic sense. (136) Long-building economic trends, not Howard Hughes’s whim to buy up available casinos, led to the arrival of corporate casino ownership in the late 1960s. (151) The successes and shortcomings of casinos in places like Atlantic City and Mississippi can be directly traced to their evolution on the suburban Las Vegas Strip. (181) Internet gaming will change the landscape of legal American gambling: “The containment of casinos in space, strained by the expansion of [terrestrial] casinos…completely collapsed with the introduction of Internet gaming. (213) ABOUT THE AUTHOR David G. Schwartz is a noted expert on the casino industry, having been featured in newspapers including the Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and New York Daily News, magazines such as the Casino Journal, and on television programs including CNN’s Moneyline. As coordinator of the Gaming Studies Research Center, Schwartz maintains the Gaming Collection, the world’s largest collection of books and journals about gambling, fields reference questions from media, industry, and academic researchers, and maintains the university’s gaming studies portal, http://gaming.unlv.edu. He teaches courses on the history of the casino industry, hospitality security and asset protection, and the history of Nevada and the Far West, and has also assisted New York New York’s efforts to preserve artifacts left by visitors in a tribute to the heroes of September 11 by supervising the preservation and cataloging of the materials involved. He also writes for Global Gaming Business magazine. Suburban Xanadu, Schwartz’s first book, was adapted from his doctoral dissertation in United States History, which he wrote at the University of California Los Angeles, where he was the youngest Ph.D. in recent memory to finish the program. Originally from Atlantic City, New Jersey, Schwartz has worked in the gaming industry. He currently lives in Las Vegas. Read advance praise for Suburban Xanadu, an excerpt of the introduction, and more at http://gaming.unlv.edu/suburbanxanadu.html For a review copy please e-mail Tooraj Kavoussi at [email protected] To schedule an interview with David Schwartz, contact him at 702.895.2242 or [email protected] .
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