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

by Jeffrey Sussman

Sin City Gangsters is a whirlwind account of how the mob created Las Vegas, building and controlling gambling casinos and buying the favors of influential politicians. The book features such mobsters as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Sam Giancana, Tony Accardo, and Nick Civella, along with their agents and hired Tony Spilotro, Lefty Rosenthal, and Donald Angelini. The casino owners transformed Vegas into an entertainment capital by building billion-dollar-plus resorts and hiring entertainers, such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. Sin City Gangsters is the only book that charts Vegas from early mob-owned casinos to billion-dollar resorts; its cast of characters were exceedingly ambitious risk takers who created a glittering mecca of sin and pleasure.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

230 pages, Hardcover

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.

[Rick Simpson · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Too much gossip

[Mircea Valcea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very amateurishly written, 8th grade level.

[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.