Steve Fischer
Autor(a) de When the Mob Ran Vegas: Stories of Money, Mayhem and Murder
Obras por Steve Fischer
Möt mig i Shanghai 1 exemplar
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 20th century
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Locais de residência
- New York City, New York, USA
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA - Educação
- University of Iowa
- Ocupações
- historian
sales and advertising
Fatal error: Call to undefined function isLitsy() in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 425- A few years ago, when Omaha-based historian Steve Fischer retired from a career in sales and advertising, he began listing his Vegas memorabilia on eBay. From those listings evolved colorful stories of the people and places Fischer knew so well during his early years in advertising, living in LA and driving on weekends across the desert to Vegas where he amassed a priceless collection of Vegas postcards, vintage hotel keys, menus from all the showrooms, signs, autographs and memories. The stories in this book, now in its fifth printing, tell true crime tales of the desert city he has seen grow and change over the last 40 years.
Membros
Críticas
Last May, the wife and I finally took our first vacation to Las Vegas. I'm no gambler, but it's one of those places that I'd always been interested in seeing.
While there, I saw this book and thought it might be interesting. I was wrong.
Oh sure, there's some interesting stories in there, though few are substantiated. In fact, at one point, the author gives a couple of different rumours of how a particular incident went down (declaring one his "favourite" ...so that's the one that must be true, right?).
Had the author taken less of a "there was this one time when..." approach to the stories and, instead, laid them out in some sort of chronological narrative (seriously, the stories hop around a lot, and you quickly find out they're all inter-related), it might have been readable. You read stories of the Riviera, for example, only to get a few stories down the line to when the Riv was being built, so earlier in the timeline.
And because the author made this bewildering decision, it also means you have to wade through the same facts a few times.
The trust level for me also fell quite a bit when I hit a chapter that, in the span of a couple of pages, spelled one name as "Broncato", "Brancanto", and "Brancato".
If you can't spell a name consistently, how meticulous are you with any of the facts?
The author also has a bad habit of mentioning a Mob incident, then mentioning a similar one in movies like The Godfather, or Casino, treating them as facts.
By the end of the book, it's obvious the author is either running on fumes, or just wants to point out how well-known he is in Vegas, because the last ten percent of the book is personal stories of him and his wife visiting Vegas and riding elevators with Lucille Ball and talking to Sammy Davis Jr. Who cares?
And finally, a completely personal opinion, but I find it a remarkable show of...hubris? conceit? self-importance? to have a series of headshots of Mob members on the cover of your book, and your own author picture is the second one in the line of seven. Really?
Not worth the money or time.… (mais)
While there, I saw this book and thought it might be interesting. I was wrong.
Oh sure, there's some interesting stories in there, though few are substantiated. In fact, at one point, the author gives a couple of different rumours of how a particular incident went down (declaring one his "favourite" ...so that's the one that must be true, right?).
Had the author taken less of a "there was this one time when..." approach to the stories and, instead, laid them out in some sort of chronological narrative (seriously, the stories hop around a lot, and you quickly find out they're all inter-related), it might have been readable. You read stories of the Riviera, for example, only to get a few stories down the line to when the Riv was being built, so earlier in the timeline.
And because the author made this bewildering decision, it also means you have to wade through the same facts a few times.
The trust level for me also fell quite a bit when I hit a chapter that, in the span of a couple of pages, spelled one name as "Broncato", "Brancanto", and "Brancato".
If you can't spell a name consistently, how meticulous are you with any of the facts?
The author also has a bad habit of mentioning a Mob incident, then mentioning a similar one in movies like The Godfather, or Casino, treating them as facts.
By the end of the book, it's obvious the author is either running on fumes, or just wants to point out how well-known he is in Vegas, because the last ten percent of the book is personal stories of him and his wife visiting Vegas and riding elevators with Lucille Ball and talking to Sammy Davis Jr. Who cares?
And finally, a completely personal opinion, but I find it a remarkable show of...hubris? conceit? self-importance? to have a series of headshots of Mob members on the cover of your book, and your own author picture is the second one in the line of seven. Really?
Not worth the money or time.… (mais)
Author Steve Fisher was a collector of Las Vegas Organized Crime objects which he then began selling on eBay. He found that people were most interested in the stories he had to tell about the objects.
This book is the product of his enthusiasm on the subject. It is a somewhat episodic story of the Mob and the early days of Vegas including Bugsy Siegel’s vision of the Las Vegas strip and the Flamingo Hotel.
For someone like me with no knowledge of the era, it was interesting. I enjoyed the many historic black and white photos.
I did not always feel it was easy to follow the story’s timeline. I do believe that a better editor could have made a more cohesive, compelling story.… (mais)
This book is the product of his enthusiasm on the subject. It is a somewhat episodic story of the Mob and the early days of Vegas including Bugsy Siegel’s vision of the Las Vegas strip and the Flamingo Hotel.
For someone like me with no knowledge of the era, it was interesting. I enjoyed the many historic black and white photos.
I did not always feel it was easy to follow the story’s timeline. I do believe that a better editor could have made a more cohesive, compelling story.… (mais)
I am a sucker. If there is a book about the mob, I can't help myself. I am not a mafia groupie – I just find the whole genre fascinating. I walked past this book quite a few times at the bookstore. Finally, there were only two copies left on the budget shelf and I threw caution and cash to the wind and bought it.
The author is a long time frequenter of Las Vegas. He started going back in the early heydays of the 1960's and collected volumes of memorabilia. He started putting the mementos on E bay and buyers were more interested in the stories than the items.
Reading this book feels like going to someone's house to play cards and have a few drinks while one person at the table regales the rest with stories about the past. I like that feel. It reminds me of my grandparents and their brothers and sisters telling the kids about what it was like back in the day.
Each chapter is short. It only took me two nights to read the whole thing and I could have finished it in one except I had an early start the next day. There are lots of recurring characters – some are straight out mafia; some are “colorful, local identities”; some are big name stars (The Rat Pack etc) and some are shady businessmen who saw a chance to make a lot of money in a big sandbox.
There is nothing too deep or dark in any of the stories. It is just a fun look at how the strip developed from nothing but the potential Bugsy Siegel saw to what it is now – a mecca for gambling, girls and a place where what happens there, stays there.
I enjoyed the author's notes about he and his wife. They were regulars at the Sands and when that declined they moved on to the Riviera and the Flamingo. If you loved the movie “Casino”, you will recognize a lot of the people who became characters in that movie. Likewise Godfathers I and II. It is the Las Vegas we all wish was still there – if only for a weekend.… (mais)
The author is a long time frequenter of Las Vegas. He started going back in the early heydays of the 1960's and collected volumes of memorabilia. He started putting the mementos on E bay and buyers were more interested in the stories than the items.
Reading this book feels like going to someone's house to play cards and have a few drinks while one person at the table regales the rest with stories about the past. I like that feel. It reminds me of my grandparents and their brothers and sisters telling the kids about what it was like back in the day.
Each chapter is short. It only took me two nights to read the whole thing and I could have finished it in one except I had an early start the next day. There are lots of recurring characters – some are straight out mafia; some are “colorful, local identities”; some are big name stars (The Rat Pack etc) and some are shady businessmen who saw a chance to make a lot of money in a big sandbox.
There is nothing too deep or dark in any of the stories. It is just a fun look at how the strip developed from nothing but the potential Bugsy Siegel saw to what it is now – a mecca for gambling, girls and a place where what happens there, stays there.
I enjoyed the author's notes about he and his wife. They were regulars at the Sands and when that declined they moved on to the Riviera and the Flamingo. If you loved the movie “Casino”, you will recognize a lot of the people who became characters in that movie. Likewise Godfathers I and II. It is the Las Vegas we all wish was still there – if only for a weekend.… (mais)
Prémios
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 2
- Membros
- 162
- Popularidade
- #130,374
- Avaliação
- 3.3
- Críticas
- 7
- ISBN
- 5
- Línguas
- 1
I quibble with some information being a bit off, such as casino boss Gus Greenbaum and his wife were not decapitated in Phoenix as reported here, but this is one of the few books about Vegas that attempts to explain what happened to the Moulin Rouge casino, which if you're familiar, that mention will get you interested. Lots of dirt on mob guys and their casinos, and a look at the city's past.… (mais)