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Author: Ralph J. Roske
Publisher: Grand Lake Media. LLC
ISBN: 0932986366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 752
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Book Description
“PROLOGUE THE SEARCH FOR GOOD WATER On November 7, 1829, a New Mexican trader named Antonio Armijo led a 60-man party on the first leg of what became a historic deviation from the Great Spanish Trail route to Los Angeles. That deviation resulted in the discovery of Las Vegas. By Christmas Day, Armijo’s caravan had crossed southern Utah and moved into the northwest corner of Arizona. The caravan camped near what is now Littlefield — a sleepy hamlet about 100 miles northeast of present Las Vegas. Armijo dispatched a reconnaissance party to look for a possible shortcut west, and to look for water. A member of the party was a young Mexican scout named Rafael Rivera. He decided to break away from the main party and head due west alone over unexplored desert.” Excerpt From: Ralph J. Roske. “Las Vegas: A Desert Paradise.” iBooks.
Author: Ralph J. Roske
Publisher: Grand Lake Media. LLC
ISBN: 0932986366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 752
Get Book Here
Book Description
“PROLOGUE THE SEARCH FOR GOOD WATER On November 7, 1829, a New Mexican trader named Antonio Armijo led a 60-man party on the first leg of what became a historic deviation from the Great Spanish Trail route to Los Angeles. That deviation resulted in the discovery of Las Vegas. By Christmas Day, Armijo’s caravan had crossed southern Utah and moved into the northwest corner of Arizona. The caravan camped near what is now Littlefield — a sleepy hamlet about 100 miles northeast of present Las Vegas. Armijo dispatched a reconnaissance party to look for a possible shortcut west, and to look for water. A member of the party was a young Mexican scout named Rafael Rivera. He decided to break away from the main party and head due west alone over unexplored desert.” Excerpt From: Ralph J. Roske. “Las Vegas: A Desert Paradise.” iBooks.
Author: Eugene P. Moehring
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 087417693X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Resort City in the Sunbelt is a non-sensationalistic, scholarly account of Las Vegas from the building of the Hoover Dam to the construction of the MGM Grand Hotel. Historian Eugene Moehring provides a balanced view of the city’s urban development. Although a unique city in many ways, Las Vegas has displayed characteristics common to other sunbelt cities across the western United States—including underfunded social services, low-density urbanization with a heavy reliance upon automobiles, a sluggish response to problems within minority communities, a preference for efficient, business-like government, and a mania for low taxes. The gaming and resort aspects are fully considered, but Moehring emphasizes the city as part of the continually expanding sunbelt. From this important study, historians will conclude that, despite some of its unusual traits, Las Vegas is much like other western cities and therefore deserves recognition as one of the fastest-growing centers in postwar America. In a new and expanded epilogue to this edition, Moehring looks at the major events of the three decades leading up to 2000 and their underpinnings.
Author: Dario Diofebi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635576210
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
“Diofebi is an irreverent and audacious new voice.”- Susan Choi, National Book Award-Winning author of TRUST EXERCISE "Vegas has been right there forever, waiting for a great novelist, and Dario Diofebi has come dealing nothing but aces."--Darin Strauss, NBCC Award-Winning author of HALF A LIFE From an exhilarating new literary voice--the story of four transplants braving the explosive political tensions behind the deceptive, spectacular, endlessly self-reinventing city of Las Vegas. On Friday, May 1st, 2015 a bomb detonates in the infamous Positano Luxury Resort and Casino, a mammoth hotel (and exact replica of the Amalfi coast) on the Las Vegas Strip. Six months prior, a crop of strivers converge on the desert city, attempting to make a home amidst the dizzying lights: Ray, a mathematically-minded high stakes professional poker player; Mary Ann, a clinically depressed cocktail waitress; Tom, a tourist from the working class suburbs of Rome, Italy; and Lindsay, a Mormon journalist for the Las Vegas Sun who dreams of a literary career. By chance and by design, they find themselves caught up in backroom schemes for personal and political power, and are thrown into the deep end of an even bigger fight for the soul of the paradoxical town. A furiously rowdy and ricocheting saga about poker, happiness, class, and selflessness, Paradise, Nevada is a panoramic tour of America in miniature, a vertiginously beautiful systems novel where the bloody battles of neo-liberalism, immigration, labor, and family rage underneath Las Vegas' beguiling and strangely benevolent light. This exuberant debut marks the beginning of a significant career.
Author: Jerry L Simich
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 0874178185
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
The remarkable economic growth of Las Vegas between 1980 and 2007 created a population boom and a major increase in the ethnic and religious diversity of the city. Today, over 21 percent of the city’s population is foreign born, and over 30 percent speak a language other than English at home. The local court system offers interpreters in 82 languages, and in 2005/2006, for example, more than 11,000 people, originating from 138 countries, were naturalized there as American citizens.More Peoples of Las Vegas extends the survey of this city’s cosmopolitan population begun in The Peoples of Las Vegas (University of Nevada Press, 2005). As in the previous book, this volume includes well-established groups like the Irish and Germans, and recently arrived groups like the Ethiopians and Guatemalans. Essays describe the history of each group in Las Vegas and the roles they play in the life and economy of the city. The essays also explore the influence of modern telecommunications and accessible air travel, showing how these factors allow newcomers to create transnational identities and maintain ties with families and culture back home. They also examine the role of local institutions—including clubs, religious organizations, shops, restaurants, and newspapers and other media—in helping immigrants maintain their ethnic and religious identities and in disseminating national and even regional cultures of origin.More Peoples of Las Vegas adds to our awareness of the rich and varied ethnic and religious character of Las Vegans. In a broader context, it offers thoughtful perspectives on the impact of globalization on a major American city and on the realities of immigrant life in the twenty-first century.
Author: Jerry L Simich
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 0874176514
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
Beneath the glitzy surface of the resorts and the seemingly cookie-cutter suburban sprawl of Las Vegas lies a vibrant and diverse ethnic life. People of varied origins make up the population of nearly two million and yet, until now, little mention of the city has been made in studies and discussion of ethnicity or immigration. The Peoples of Las Vegas: One City, Many Faces fills this void by presenting the work of seventeen scholars of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, urban studies, cultural studies, literature, social work, and ethnic studies to provide profiles of thirteen of the city’s many ethnic groups. The book’s introduction and opening chapters explore the historical and demographic context of these groups, as well as analyze the economic and social conditions that make Las Vegas so attractive to recent immigrants. Each group is the subject of the subsequent chapters, outlining migration motivations and processes, economic pursuits, cultural institutions and means of transmitting culture, involvement in the broader community, ties to homelands, and recent demographic trends.
Author: Alicia Barber
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
When Pittsburgh socialite Laura Corey rolled into Reno, Nevada, in 1905 for a six-month stay, her goal was a divorce from the president of U.S. Steel. Her visit also provided a provocative glimpse into the city's future. With its rugged landscape and rough-edged culture, Reno had little to offer early twentieth-century visitors besides the gambling and prostitution that had remained unregulated since Nevada's silver-mining heyday. But the possibility of easy divorce attracted national media attention, East Coast notables, and Hollywood stars, and soon the "Reno Cure" was all the rage. Almost overnight, Reno was on the map. Alicia Barber traces the transformation of Reno's reputation from backward railroad town to the nationally known "Sin Central"—as Garrison Keillor observed, a place where you could see things that you wouldn't want to see in your own hometown. Chronicling the city's changing fortunes from the days of the Comstock Lode, she describes how city leaders came to embrace an identity as "The Biggest Little City in the World" and transform their town into a lively tourist mecca. Focusing on the evolution of urban reputation, Barber carefully distinguishes between the image that a city's promoters hope to manufacture and the impression that outsiders actually have. Interweaving aspects of urban identity, she shows how sense of place, promoted image, and civic reputation intermingled and influenced each other—and how they in turn shaped the urban environment. Quickie divorces notwithstanding, Reno's primary growth engine was gambling; modern casinos came to dominate the downtown landscape. When mainstream America balked, Reno countered by advertising "tax freedom" and natural splendor to attract new residents. But by the mid-seventies, unchecked growth and competition from Las Vegas had initiated a downslide that persisted until a carefully crafted series of special events and the rise of recreational tourism began to attract new breeds of tourists. Barber's engaging story portrays Reno as more than a second-string Las Vegas, having pioneered most of the attractions-gaming and prizefighting, divorces and weddings-that made the larger city famous. As Reno continues to remold itself to weather the shifting winds of tourism and growth, Barber's book provides a cautionary tale for other cities hoping to ride the latest consumer trends.
Author: Nathaniel Lewis
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803299931
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Problem of the Past -- 2. The Problem of Space and Place -- 3. The Problem of Aesthetics -- 4. The Problem of the [Uncanny] West -- Conclusion -- "Just Another Day in Paradise"--Source Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Author: Robin L. Murray
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806187379
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Most film critics point to classic conflicts—good versus evil, right versus wrong, civilization versus savagery—as defining themes of the American Western. In this provocative examination of Westerns from Tumbleweeds (1925) to Rango (2011), Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann argue for a more expansive view that moves beyond traditional conflicts to encompass environmental themes and struggles. The environment, after all, is the fundamental stage for most western stories, from land rush dramas that pit “sod busters” against ranchers to conflicts between mining-town communities and corporations. Because environmental issues lie at the forefront of so many conflicts today, Murray and Heumann believe that the Western is ripe for such new examination. Drawing on perspectives from both film studies and environmental history, the authors show how western films frequently deal with issues related to land use and different ways of looking at the natural world. In films as diverse as Gene Autry musicals, early John Wayne B-Westerns, and revisionist critiques such as the 2010 remake of True Grit, resources are exploited in the name of progress. Beginning with an analysis of two iconic Westerns, Shane and The Searchers, Murray and Heumann identify the environmental dichotomies—previously overlooked by critics—that are broached in both films, and they clarify the history that lies behind the environmental debates in these films and many others. How do Westerns respond to the historical contexts they present? And what do those responses suggest about American views of nature and its exploitation? The conflicts these movies address grow out of differing views of progress, frequently in relation to technology. The authors show that such binary oppositions tend to blur when examined closely, demonstrating that environmental issues are often more complex than we realize.
Author: William L. Fox
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 0874176522
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Las Vegas, says William Fox, is a pay-as-you-play paradise that succeeds in satisfying our fantasies of wealth and the excesses of pleasure and consumption that go with it. In this context, Fox examines how Las Vegas’s culture of spectacle has obscured the boundaries between high art and entertainment extravaganza, nature and fantasy, for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. His purview ranges from casino art galleries—including Steve Wynn’s private collection and a branch of the famed Guggenheim Museum—to the underfunded Las Vegas Art Museum; from spectacular casino animal collections like those of magicians Siegfried and Roy and Mandalay Bay’s Shark Reef exhibit to the city’s lack of support for a viable public zoo; from the environmental and psychological impact of lavish water displays in the arid desert to the artistic ambiguities intrinsic to Las Vegas’s floating world of showgirls, lapdancers, and ballet divas. That Las Vegas represents one of the world’s most opulent displays of private material wealth in all its forms, while providing miserly funding for local public amenities like museums and zoos, is no accident, Fox maintains. Nor is it unintentional that the city’s most important collections of art and exotic fauna are presented in the context of casino entertainment, part of the feast of sensation and excitement that seduces millions of visitors each year. Instead, this phenomenon shows how our insatiable modern appetite for extravagance and spectacle has diminished the power of unembellished nature and the arts to teach and inspire us, and demonstrates the way our society privileges private benefit over public good. Given that Las Vegas has been a harbinger of national cultural trends, Fox’s commentary offers prescient insight into the increasing commercialization of nature and culture across America.
Author: Diane E. Greene
Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Com
ISBN: 9780806348162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
"This book pulls together records from a variety of sources, including information from county court houses, Nevada internet sites, and various lists..."--Page iv.
