Includes index.

"Pete Earley takes a look at the checkered history of Las Vegas - when moguls, mobsters, and the world's top entertainers came together to create this ultimate monument to American excess. This book reveals the real stories of well-known power brokers like Steve Wynn, Vegas legends like Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel, and the rise and fall and rise again of the entrepreneurs behind one of the largest gaming corporations in the nation, the colossus Circus Circus, to which the author was given unique access." "This book lays forth the real Las Vegas and shows how and why it has become the biggest draw in the country, offering adult and family entertainment like no other in the world. The result is an often troubling look at a uniquely American city founded on greed - and a nation that built its own mad Mecca in the desert."--Jacket.

"Pete Earley takes a look at the checkered history of Las Vegas - when moguls, mobsters, and the world's top entertainers came together to create this ultimate monument to American excess. This book reveals the real stories of well-known power brokers like Steve Wynn, Vegas legends like Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel, and the rise and fall and rise again of the entrepreneurs behind one of the largest gaming corporations in the nation, the colossus Circus Circus, to which the author was given unique access." "This book lays forth the real Las Vegas and shows how and why it has become the biggest draw in the country, offering adult and family entertainment like no other in the world. The result is an often troubling look at a uniquely American city founded on greed - and a nation that built its own mad Mecca in the desert."--BOOK JACKET.