Neon Metropolis offers a panoramic account of contemporary Las Vegas, long America's capital of excess and now its fastest growing city. Combining a history of the city's growth via gambling and crime, with a descriptive social portrait of contemporary Las Vegas, Hal Rothman shows how the city has shed its stigma as Sin City and is now setting the pace for nationwide trends in leisure, work, consumption, immigration, demographics and city growth.

Like the Emerald City, Las Vegas glitters brightly in the vast Nevada desert, a haven for refugees from the ordinary America. A hip, iconic playground that exports nothing, it nonetheless earns billions from consumer services alone

The Grit Beneath the Glitter is the first real look at the new Las Vegas from the inside. In it, long-time residents as well as professionals reflect on the transformation of one of the fastest-growing and most famous cities on earth, yet one about which relatively little is known. They offer a lively and compelling portrait of the other side of Las Vegas: the people and institutions that support the glitter of the gaming and entertainment industry. Examining a range of topics--from the city's commercial history, labor conditions, and environmental problems to an analysis of the famous...

The first comprehensive study of the park, past and present, Death Valley National Park probes the environmental and human history of this most astonishing desert. Established as a national monument in 1933, Death Valley was an anomaly within the national park system. Though many who knew this landscape were convinced that its stark beauty should be preserved, to do so required a reconceptualization of what a park consists of, grassroots and national support for its creation, and a long and difficult political struggle to secure congressional sanction.
This history begins with a...