Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas

by Jeffrey Sussman

Sin City The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas is a fast-paced account of how the mob created and controlled Las Vegas. It contains accounts of how the most powerful mobsters in the country built, bought, and controlled not only gambling casinos in Vegas, but also many important politicians, who did the mob’s bidding. Some of the more notorious mobsters were Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Sam Giancana, Tony Accardo, and Nick Civella, as well as the men they chose to carry out their plans, such as Tony Spilotro, Lefty Rosenthal, and Donald Angelini. Sin City Gangsters devotes a chapter to Jimmy Hoffa, and how the Teamsters Pension Fund financed the mob’s casinos. The book also offers fascinating accounts of the roles of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in Vegas. Another chapter is devoted to Howard Hughes, who arrived in the dead of night in a sealed, germ-free railroad car and did not leave his suite at the Desert Inn for years. During that time he bought one casino after another as if playing Monopoly. Following his exit and that of the mob, Vegas became the domain of Jay Sarno, Kirk Kerkorian, Steve Wynn, and Sheldon Adelson. They were visionaries who transformed Vegas into the entertainment capital of the world by building billion-dollars-plus resorts and hiring the most popular contemporary entertainers. Sin City Gangsters is the only book that charts Vegas from the first modest mob-owned casinos to the present billion-dollar-resorts; its cast of characters is an assembly of exceedingly ambitious risk takers who let nothing stand in their way of turning their dreams into stunning realities.

Genres: History

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2023

Reviews

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disorganized and reads more like fan fiction than serious scholarship. The author claims at one point that Goebbels and Goering had been at the Flamingo Casino and could have been knocked off--neither ever visited the US. One wonders how much of the book is simply tall tales, many perhaps concocted by the author himself.

[Treebee55 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like reading a gangster movie

An easy read about the self centered gangsters and business promoters and the methods they used to suck billions of dollars from people.... Where the house always wins and the crowds play on.
A good book for the history of how Las Vegas became as it is.

[Andy Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting subject but the writing was a bit much. Example: Hughes was like a sweet-deprived kid with an unlimited budget who was suddenly unleashed in a candy store. Well-researched.