Sharks in the Desert:
The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of Las Vegas
by John L. Smith
October 2005 | $24.95 | Hardcover | ISBN: 978-1-56980-274-8
By now, everyone knows the story of the mob’s involvement in Las Vegas’s growth from quiet desert town to “Sin City,” the gambling capital of the world, and one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. There have been numerous movies glamorizing Vegas’s early years. At the end of one of those movies, Casino, you see a hotel come down and a voice describe the end of the mob era in Vegas. That was hardly the end of the Las Vegas story. In fact, it was probably just the beginning. Consider Sharks in the Desert a sequel to Casino. It tells the story of the corporate raiders who moved into the city—the Kirk Kerkorians and Steve Wynns—as the mob era crumbled (literally) and forcibly cleaned up the Vegas image. Now Las Vegas is a place for “family entertainment.” The theme-park feel of the city has been carefully crafted by a handful of very savvy corporate moguls who use that image to extract the maximum profit out of all kinds of people who are drawn to Vegas each year. Sharks in the Desert is the story of these men. It provides the who, what, when, and where of the renaissance that occurred in Las Vegas over the past few decades.
John L. Smith
Smith is an award-winning columnist for The Las Vegas Review-Journal. His other books include Running Scared, Moving to Las Vegas, Of Rats and Men: Oscar Goodman’s Life from Mob Mouthpiece to Mayor of Las Vegas, and No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower.
