Product Description

Las Vegas is the most populous city in the State of Nevada and a hub for entertainment. Attracting millions of visitors each year, the Entertainment Capital of the World is the largest U.S. city founded in the 20th century. The valley in which it lies was named Las Vegas (The Meadows) by Spaniards in the Antonio Armijo party, who used the water in the area while heading north and west along the Spanish Trail. After the opening of Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel in 1946, the city and many of its residents gained international stardom. With nearly 200 photographs of this dynamic city like no other city, this coffee-table book like no other book is sure to be a hit with residents, visitors, and history buffs alike!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #945214 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 216 pages

Review
Historic Photos of Las Vegas from Turner Publishing is a beautiful hardcover book with a very full 200 pages- it s chock full of pictures and captions and very few of them are ones I've seen before. I highly recommend this book, and Turner Publishing has an amazing selection of other major U.S. cities as well. --The Las Vegas Adventurer.com

Watch Las Vegas grow from its meager beginnings as a scattering of tents called Ragtown, to its mob-run days as Glitter Gultch, into the modern mega-resort juggernaut that is the largest American city to be developed entirely within the 20th century. Would Sin City by any other name conjure images of one of the world's premier travel destinations? Maybe not, but it's interesting to know how it got there. --Nevada Magazine

To appreciate the evolution of Las Vegas, Nevada get yourself a copy of Historic Photos of Las Vegas written by Jeff Burbank and published by Turner Publishing. It is amazing how a once inhospitable, rugged desert region, has turned into the glitzy, glamorous, fun capital of the world. The history is fascinating and the photos reproduced in this book showcase the toughness, creativity, perseverance and tenacity of the early founders of this great city. --southwestblend.com

About the Author
Jeff Burbank is a longtime journalist and editor who has been writing about Las Vegas history since the 1990s. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree in communications-print journalism from American University. He is the author of License to Steal: Nevada's Gaming Control System in the Megaresort Age and Las Vegas Babylon. He has been published in many venues, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Las Vegas Review-Journal and Sun, Reno Gazette-Journal and Newsweek. He is currently an instructor for the English Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Customer Reviews

A couple of hundred large format B&W photos showing the development of Vegas from 1904-1969
Jeff Burbank is a journalist and writer about Las Vegas and teaches in the English Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Here he has selected about 200 photographs showing the rise of Las Vegas from a mere railroad stop in 1904 to the booming city of lights it had become by 1969. As in all these Historic Photos of series, these are all large format black and white photos. Burbank provides interesting and informative chapter introductions and captions for the photos.

The book shows us the photos in four periods. The first shows us the rise from railstop to boomtown 1904-1910 and is quite fascinating. The second is "Molding a Desert Community" before the Hoover Dam 1911-1929.

The third chapter takes us through the building of Hoover Dam during the Great Depression and how World War II requiring large numbers of soldiers to pass through Las Vegas by train and the vast amounts electricity provided by the Hoover Dam changed the town.

The last chapter takes us through the early years of the Las Vegas we would recognize, with the brilliant lights, casinos, and the elaborate shows with the show girls. The period covered in the book takes us from 1950-1969. Obviously, Las Vegas has changed utterly since then, but the book is historic photos after all.

Fascinating stuff.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

MONEY WASTED
THIS BOOK IS ABOUT COWBOYS'S VEGAS.
YOU WON'T SEE THE GLITTER.
ALSO, MOST OF THE IMAGES ARE IN LESS EXPENSIVE BOOKS.