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Neon Metropolis
by Hal Rothman
Routledge 2002
(originally appeared in Hyde Park Review of Books)

For most of the 20th century, the role of Las Vegas in American life was that of a Victorian-era prostitute, giving respectable citizens a reliable outlet for their less than civilized impulses while knowing well enough to keep its distance from the mainstream society it served. Synonymous with sin and excess, the city was an anomaly; while it provided fodder for many a sociology dissertation or architectural treatise, the idea that Las Vegas really represented the rest of America was as laughable as the notion that our captains of industry were no different from gangsters and pimps. Then somehow, while our backs were turned, this desert outpost of libertinism and experience for hire became one of the nation's fastest-growing communities, run by major corporations rather than mobsters, inhabited by a sprawling suburban middle class virtually indistinguishable from their peers in Phoenix, Los Angeles, or San Jose. How did it happen? What does it mean?

In its opening pages, Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-first Century by Hal Rothman resembles nothing more than a text-heavy coffee table book, rich in factoids, statistics, and lines like "Here is the unbelievable made temporal, held in your hands. Here is America in the new millennium." Soon enough, however, what appears to be starry-eyed boosterism deepens into a more nuanced and thought-provoking discussion of how Las Vegas and the American mainstream have come to converge. It's worth paying attention; for all its unique qualities, the city nonetheless emerges as a convincing prototype for American cities in the new millennium, sharing many of the same challenges, vices, and aspirations as the rest of us.

Las Vegas spent the first half of the last century as the town nobody wanted, jilted by the railroads, limping along on government jobs at Hoover Dam and the nearby Nevada Test Site. In those early days, the town's survival depended on giving people whatever they wanted, whether it be gambling, prostitution, or a quickie divorce; it was in no position to turn away anyone with money to spend. The city's obliging libertarianism made it a natural destination for gangsters seeking an easier score. As Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz and the like transformed the desert backwater into a vice paradise, the well-paying service jobs in their casinos nurtured the emergence of a thriving middle class, and Las Vegas was on its way.

At the end of the 1960s, as mob money was supplanted first by Howard Hughes, Kirk Kirkorian, and other legitimate financiers, then by corporate money, Las Vegas drew still nearer to respectability. By 1980, the state's five dominant gaming entities were all publicly traded corporations. Whereas the first non-gaming resort failed soon after opening in 1966, today such attractions make up 52 percent of the city's total revenues. While showgirls remain a staple, art galleries, five-star restaurants, roller coasters, pirate extravaganzas, and other family-friendly fare helped the city surpass Mecca in 1999 as the world's most-visited location.

Las Vegas ended the twentieth century having completed its transformation from the seamy underside of American life to the mainstream. Meanwhile, its rapid population growth had ushered in a litany of strikingly square problems, from gridlocked freeways to rampant suburban sprawl to retirees who balk at paying taxes to support public education. The city's upper middle class, as in many other major cities, is too transient to feel much of an investment in local issues, and shows little interest in public discourse beyond schools and roads. A growing Hispanic underclass and a gradual shift in power from the once-mighty Culinary Union to the large corporations that employ them have widened class divisions, and the opportunities for self-reinvention are becoming fewer and farther between. The transition of casino ownership and management from local family dynasties to multinational corporations has moved control of the Strip to distant boardrooms, eroding the city's sense of tradition and (all irony aside) authenticity.

The historic willingness of the Las Vegas's weak government to let private businesses compensate for the lack of public infrastructure has resulted in few public spaces of any kinds. Where even the sidewalks are privately financed and built, free speech and assembly are only as secure as the goodwill of their owners' would-be picketers from the city's unions and pamphleteers at the theoretically public Fulton Street Experience have already discovered. On a more mundane level, this abdication of governmental responsibility leaves book clubs and other ad hoc groups scrambling for a place to meet. "One organization in which I participated held its meetings in an eye doctor's office; later, we moved to the patio of a coffee shop that belonged to a sympathetic business owner." As developers assume the role of city planners and homeowners associations take the place of local representative governments in edge cities across the country, experiences like these threaten to become all too common.

Neon Metropolis succeeds on many levels, almost too many. Rothman seems unsure at times whether to focus on the thesis stated in his subtitle, or to write a catch-all book on the history and culture of Las Vegas, although he does satisfy on both counts. Chapters delving into labor history, highway disputes, and water rights negotiations risk losing the reader in unfamiliar geographical references and insiderspeak. However, it's Rothman's inside perspective as a professor of history at UNLV that provides much of the book's texture and insight, as well as personal anecdotes and quotes from a long succession of locals that fill out the stories behind the statistics. Such touches bring humanity to an often bleak scenario of balkanized developments dotting an ecologically compromised desert, reminding us that our society is made up not of trends, but of people. And, as in the case of the impromptu shrine that rose at the New York, New York casino following September 11, that even in an environment seemingly void of authentic experience, genuine humanity will find a niche.