Why My New Book Is Something for Your Money

Something for Your Money

As promised, my latest book, Something for Your Money: A History of Las Vegas Casinos, was published earlier this month. II would like to take a minute to explain the title.

I am open to anything when it comes to book titles. It’s been so long I forget why I settled on Suburban Xanadu for my dissertation/first book, but it must have made sense to me. It was almost certainly influenced by the Xanadu theater, which was located in the Atlantic City casino that I worked in, but I’ve got nothing beyond that.

Grandissimo was obvious—it was Jay Sarno’s unbuilt masterpiece, and the one word that I thought summed up his life. At the Sands came to me at the eleventh hour, after the book was finished. I was listening to Sinatra and Basie Live at the Sands for inspiration, and I said, “Hey, I should just call it At the Sands.”

“Something for your money” was a slogan that Arizona Club proprietor Jim McIntosh used which I thought summed up the Las Vegas tourist experience: you will definitely part with your money, and you will definitely get something in return, but there are no promises about exactly what it is. Over a hundred years later, I think it still fits.

But something else was nagging at me. I have two histories of gambling next to each other on my bookshelf, both of them called Something for Nothing; one is by Clyde Brion Davis, the other by Alice Fleming. Both are, I think, long out of print. It just so happens that when I do Peloton yoga (a few times a week), these books are in my line of sight when I’m in a supine posture. So over the past few years I have had plenty of time to turn that title over in my mind.

(There is also an excellent and groundbreaking book by T. Jackson Lears called Something for Nothing: Luck in America, but I don’t have that one it home, so I’m not meditating on it while doing supine figure four, and I didn’t have it in mind when I was thinking of a title.)

Now, there’s also a song by Rush called “Something for Nothing,” which specifically tells us that “you don’t get something for nothing/you don’t get freedom for free.” Rush is one Canadian power trio that has never, ever let me down, so I’m not about to start discounting their lyrics.

In this case, the more I think about it, the more I am confident that Geddy, Alex, and Neil are onto something here, especially as far as Las Vegas is concerned. Those who gamble certainly give up something for their chance at the big money: their own little money. It doesn’t make any sense to say that the history of gambling is the story of “something for nothing.”

So the contrarian in me thought, if I’m writing a history of gambling in Las Vegas, let me simultaneously riff on Rush and correct the record as to the real equation that has defined Las Vegas since its founding.

It’s a bit of a callback to how I titled Boardwalk Playground, my history of Atlantic City that recalls that resort’s reputation as “the world’s playground” and subverts HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, the point being that while from one perspective the politics at the top are the story, none of it is possible without people wanting to have some fun.

While I’m talking about having fun, I wanted to share that the Something for Your Money media tour has started:  I had a great conversation on “Talk about Las Vegas with Ira” that explored some of the stories in the book. Writing books is solitary, so the opportunity to connect with others is one of my favorite parts of the process. I am looking forward to doing more interviews, so if you have some airtime you would like to fill, get in touch.

Like every other book I have written, this one was a journey of discovery. It’s funny that some people think that you write a book because you know more than anyone about a topic. That’s never been how I work—I start with a question and start digging, and by the time I’ve got a decent answer, I have enough to write a book about.

This one ended up being about filling in some gaps I had in my understanding of how Las Vegas gambling developed, particularly before 1940 and after 2000. There has been a lot written about the “classic” period (much of it by me), but there are a lot of great stories on both sides of that era, which I consider 1940ish to 1970ish. I hadn’t seen a lot on the earliest years of Las Vegas gambling, and I am proud of those chapters, which showed me there was a lot more continuity than we think.

It was a challenge to write about history that I lived through, and I don’t know that we have the right perspective yet to really appreciate what’s happened in Las Vegas over the past ten years. I’m always uneasy when I write a story without an end. About the last thing to happen chronologically in the book was the closure of The Mirage, but while that’s the end of one casino, it’s the beginning of another.

Still, Something for Your Money is my first attempt at digesting the changes in Las Vegas over the past twenty years. Since I stopped writing weekly and feature pieces, I haven’t had much reason to systematically think about what’s been going on; I now had to. So if you liked my stuff back in the Seven days, you might get a kick out of seeing what I would have been writing if it was still around.

Just a few thoughts to share a little bit more of the story behind Something for Your Money. Now that other people can read the book, it all feels worth it.

So until next time, expect the unexpected, stay informed, and I’ll stay informal.

 

 

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