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.

Introduction Part I: Making Money 1. Inventing Modern Las Vegas 2. It's Hard to Be Elvis in Las Vegas: Entertainment in the Malleable Metropolis 3. The Last Detroit: The New Service Economy 4. Freedom and Limits in a City of Pleasure Part II: Filling Las Vegas 5. The New Emigrant Trail 6. The Face of the Future 7. Aztlan in Neon: Latinos in the New City Part III: Building a New City 8. The Tortoise and the Air: Life in a Libertarian Desert 9. Rolling to a Stop: The Weight of Traffic 10. The Instant Metropolis: Building a City without Basements or Closets 11. Community from Nothingness: Neighborhoods of Affinity Epilogue