ITEM OVERVIEW
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 lights of the Strip--the contributors uncover the contradictions between the illusion and the reality of the city, the seam between fantasy and the life it masks. The essays in this collection explore the world that employees experience when they enter gaming palaces from an employee entrance in a back parking lot rather than through the scripted doors of casino/hotel palaces. They take readers into the neighborhoods where 1.4 million Americans now live, attend school, eat dinner, and go to work.
"Like rabbits mesmerized by a snake, cultural critics have been locked onto the public spectacle of Las Vegas for so long they've taken its facades for its entirety. But what is now surely the greatest show on earth is in every sense of the word a production. That production requires extraordinary natural resources and the grueling labor offstage of producers-hotel maids, construction workers-and as a byproduct has generated a vast city that says far more about the scary state of things than all the sequins on all the nipples on the strip. Grit Beneath the Glitter gets that picture whole, in an exhilarating, unsettling way."--Rebecca Solnit
"Most of us have ideas about Las Vegas. (In 1999 it surpassed Mecca as the world's top tourist attraction.) But what is it like to live there, to work there? How long can it keep reshaping itself and what does its example mean for the future? In this book, artists, critics, and scholars, all with an intimate knowledge of the place, combine forces to explain this latest version of the American dream, compelling the attention of anyone interested in what the urban future holds. Their insights will amaze you."--Carol A. O'Connor, co-editor of The Oxford History of the American West
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