Book description
Sally Denton and Roger Morris make clear how and why Las Vegas became
the greatest 'business success story' of the twentieth century, and how
the rest of America ensured this success by contributing capital as well
as customers. Headquarters of a trillion-dollar worldwide empire, the
site of unprecedented political and economic power, Las Vegas is by no
means an aberrant sin city. Denton and Morris demonstrate how it has
grown out of, and reflects, a corruption and a worship of money that
have crept into American life since Prohibition. They trace the original
funds for the founding of the Las Vegas we know today to nationwide
narcotics trafficking. They show how deeply a multiethnic criminal
syndicate, in part feeding off gambling profits and the skim in Las
Vegas, came to influence American politics and the larger society, and
how pervasively its 'style of business' has penetrated the entire
nation. Denton and Morris detail the amazing rise and reach of Meyer
Lansky - the mind that ran the city; exactly how criminals, politicians,
and businessmen worked together to control Las Vegas; the curious
interplay of the city with the fates of Joseph, John F., and Robert
Kennedy; how Mormon bankers and Wall Street financiers have bankrolled
and profited from casinos ruled by organised crime; how a handful of
dedicated journalists and law enforcement officers were destroyed before
they could expose the city's secrets. The Money and the Power is a
detailed and illuminating chronicle of an extraordinary place and time -
and a provocative reinterpretation of twentieth-century American
history. Sally Denton is an award-winning investigative reporter in
both print and television, and has written for the New York Times, the
Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. Her husband and coauthor, Roger
Morris, served on the senior staff of the National Security Council
under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. He has won several national
journalism prizes, and is the author of several books on history and
politics.
