Now THIS is the book on Las Vegas I have been searching for. Not merely a history or list of developers, but profiles of the people and their visions that have made Las Vegas the sparkly, shiny growth capital that it is.

The author addresses both the tacky beginnings and the underlying unease that people, even people who live here, find in an economy built on vice. Kerkorian (MGM) and Loveman (Harrah's-Caesar's) both covet the potential that is here, but live elsewhere. Wynn (Mirage, then Wynn) has been a Las Vegas booster from the first day that he moved here, but has also tried to bring his childhood memories of eastern tall tree forests and lakes for waterskiing to this desert community.

While Kerkorian and Wynn are rivals, they both want to built temples to their vision. Wynn has Wynn and Encore, Kerkorian is building CityCenter. Loveman is a Harvard labor economist who brought an intense analysis of how people gamble and how he can encourage them to gamble only at his casinos via Reward Cards and contests and chatty personalized emails. Each of these men have brought a piece of their vision and made Las Vegas what it is today. Kerkorian brought in Wall Street investors and made casinos corporate. Wynn saw that Las Vegas was more than gambling and brought in the first Ferrari dealership and other upscale retailers into Nevada while building his disneyesque casinos. Loveman carved out the science of blue collar gambling and brought hordes of people to his low cost, low glitz casinos.

If Las Vegas is a puzzle, then it is a puzzle made of the pieces that these men and their staffs originated. Without them Las Vegas would be a low rent poker palace with a few dusty suburbs. I'm glad it is not. ( )