A comprehensive look into how Macau’s recent decades of gambling-related growth produced one of the wealthiest territories on the planet
Betting on Macau delves into the radical transformation of what was formerly the last remaining European territory in Asia, returned to the People’s Republic of China in 1999 after nearly half a millennium of Portuguese rule. Examining the unprecedented scale of its development and its key role in China’s economic revolution, Tim Simpson follows Macau’s emergence from historical obscurity to become the most profitable casino gaming locale in the world.
Identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and renowned for its unique blend of Chinese and Portuguese colonial-era architecture, contemporary Macau has metamorphosed into a surreal, hypermodern urban landscape augmented by massive casino megaresorts, including two of the world’s largest buildings. Simpson situates Macau’s origins as a strategic trading port and its ensuing history alongside the emergence of the global capitalist system, charting the massive influx of foreign investment, construction, and tourism in the past two decades that helped generate the territory’s enormous wealth.
Presented through a cross section of postcolonial studies and social theory with extensive insight into the global gambling industry, Betting on Macau uncovers the various roots of the territory’s lucrative casino capitalism. In turn, its trenchant analysis provides a distinctive view into China’s broader project of urbanization, its post-Mao economic reforms, and the continued rise of its consumer culture.
The glitter and excitement that tourists associate with casinos is only a facade. To the gaming industry's front-line employees, its dealers, the casino is a far less glamorous environment, a workplace full of emotional tension, physical and mental demands, humor and pathos. Author H. Lee Barnes, who spent many years as a dealer in some of Las Vegas's best-known casinos, shows us this world from the point of view of the table-games dealer. Told in the voices of dozens of dealers, male and female, young and old, Dummy Up and Deal takes us to the dealer's side of the table. We observe the "breaking in" that constitutes a dealer's training, where the hands learn the motions of the game while the mind undergoes the requisite hardening to endure long hours of concentration and the demands of often unreasonable and sometimes abusive players. We discover how dealers are hired and assigned to shifts and tables, how they interact with each other and with their supervisors, and how they deal with players—the winners and the losers, the "Sweethearts" and the "Dragon Lady," the tourists looking for a few thrills and the mobsters showing off their "juice." We observe cheaters on both sides of the table and witness the exploits of such high-rollers as Frank Sinatra and Colonel Parker, Elvis's manager. And we learn about the dealers' lives after-hours, how some juggle casino work with family responsibilities while others embrace the bohemian lifestyle of the Strip and sometimes lose themselves to drugs, drink, or sex. It's a life that invites cynicism and bitterness, that can erode the soul and deaden the spirit. But the dealer's life can also offer moments of humor, encounters with generous and kindly players, moments of pride or humanity or professional solidarity. Barnes writes with the candor of a keen observer of his profession, someone who has seen it all—many times—but has never lost his capacity to wonder, to sympathize, or to laugh. Dummy Up and Deal is a colorful insider's view of the casino industry, a fascinating glimpse behind the glitter into the real world of the casino worker.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once synonymous with steel. But after the factories closed, the city bet its future on a new industry: casino gambling. On the site of the former Bethlehem Steel plant, thousands of flashing slot machines and digital bells replaced the fires in the blast furnaces and the shift change whistles of the industrial workplace. From Steel to Slots tells the story of a city struggling to make sense of the ways in which local jobs, landscapes, and identities are transformed by global capitalism.
Postindustrial redevelopment often makes a clean break with a city’s rusted past. In Bethlehem, where the new casino is industrial-themed, the city’s heritage continues to dominate the built environment and infuse everyday experiences. Through the voices of steelworkers, casino dealers, preservationists, immigrants, and executives, Chloe Taft examines the ongoing legacies of corporate presence and urban development in a small city—and their uneven effects.
Today, multinational casino corporations increasingly act as urban planners, promising jobs and new tax revenues to ailing communities. Yet in an industry premised on risk and capital liquidity, short-term gains do not necessarily mean long-term commitments to local needs. While residents often have few cards to play in the face of global capital and private development, Taft argues that the shape economic progress takes is not inevitable, nor must it always look forward. Memories of corporations’ accountability to communities persist, and citizens see alternatives for more equitable futures in the layered landscapes all around them.
Maggie Foltz is a fifty-five-year-old cocktail waitress in a rundown casino in the southern Nevada Mojave Desert. She spends her days serving drinks to lonely old folks playing the slot machines and her nights trying to escape her bitter past. When she befriends Sarah, a young Native American woman who is hired to cook in the casino coffee shop, her life begins to change. Maggie finds herself falling in love with a memory-haunted Vietnam veteran and warily begins to hope that together they can find peace. Then Sarah is mysteriously murdered, and Sarah’s ghost enlists Maggie to accompany her on a quest for the wisdom that she needs in order to move into the next world. The story ranges from smoky casinos into the harsh magnificence of the desert and the reservation where Sarah’s people are trying to preserve their culture and find their own place in a modern world that seems to want them to be either shamans or losers. Sojourner’s characters are compellingly real, and the Mojave setting has rarely been depicted as sensitively or truthfully. This is a memorable story of love, redemption, and solace, told by one of the West’s finest writers.
From 1940 to 1989, nearly every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip employed a full-time band or orchestra. After the late 1980s, when control of the casinos changed hands from independent owners to corporations, almost all of these musicians found themselves unemployed. Played Out on the Strip traces this major shift in the music industry through extensive interviews with former musicians. In 1989, these soon-to-be unemployed musicians went on strike. Janis McKay charts the factors behind this strike, which was precipitated by several corporate hotel owners moving to replace live musicians with synthesizers and taped music, a strategic decision made in order to save money. The results of this transitional period in Las Vegas history were both long-lasting and far-reaching for the entertainment industry. With its numerous oral history interviews and personal perspectives from the era, this book will appeal to readers interested in Las Vegas history, music history, and labor issues.
The Native American casino and gaming industry has attracted unprecedented American public attention to life on reservations. Other tribal public venues, such as museums and powwows, have also gained in popularity among non-Native audiences and become sites of education and performance.
In PublicNative America, Mary Lawlor explores the process of tribal self-definition that the communities in her study make available to off-reservation audiences. Focusing on architectural and interior designs as well as performance styles, she reveals how a complex and often surprising cultural dynamic is created when Native Americans create lavish displays for the public’s participation and consumption.
Drawing on postcolonial and cultural studies, Lawlor argues that these venues serve as a stage where indigenous communities play out delicate negotiations—on the one hand retaining traditional beliefs and rituals, while on the other, using what they have learned about U.S. politics, corporate culture, tourism, and public relations to advance their economic positions.
The history of Reno during the first half century is to a great degree the history of Reno’s gaming industry. Between 1931 and 1981, the economy, skyline, and lifestyle of “the Biggest Little City in the World” were strongly influenced by the city’s casinos and the people who created and operated them. In The Rise of the Biggest Little City, longtime Reno gaming executive Dwayne Kling records the fruits of his fourteen years of research into the history of Reno’s casinos, from the backroom (and often illegal) dives of the industry’s beginnings to the elegant casino-hotels of today. Arranged in encyclopedic form with historic photographs (many never before published), the book offers the stories of such famous establishments as Harolds Club, the Cal-Neva, the Sands, and Harrah’s, as well as defunct clubs like the Cedars, the Silver Spur, and the Bank Club. We also find the stories of the men and women who created Reno’s gaming industry—such as James McKay and Bill Graham, who came from the rough-and-tumble saloons of boom-town Tonopah and developed a chain of illegal gambling clubs and brothels into Reno’s first major casino, the Bank Club; the Smith family—Raymond I. “Pappy,” Harold Sr., Raymond A., and Harold Jr.—whose Harolds Club was a prime downtown attraction for over fifty years and brought Reno national fame as a destination for fun and gambling; Bill Bailey, an African-American whose Harlem Club—one of the first integrated casinos in Reno—attracted such show-business luminaries as Louis Armstrong and Pearl Bailey (his cousin) for late-night jam sessions; William Harrah, who parleyed a string of small bingo parlors into a major gaming empire; and Jack Douglass, a slot-route operator in the early days of legal gaming who became a major figure in Reno’s modern casino industry. There are more. Kling records the stories of hundreds of gaming establishments, most of them long forgotten, stretching geographically from the Mount Rose Highway to the north end of town, from Verdi to Sparks; and of dozens of men and women who shaped the industry, for better and for worse. We learn from that Reno was the true pioneer of the gambling industry. It was here that big-name entertainment was first offered in a casino setting; that elegant hotel rooms and fine dining were first offered as amenities of the casino experience; that a casino corporation first traded its stock on the New York Stock Exchange; that ethnic minorities first owned and operated casinos, and first integrated them. The Rise of the Biggest Little City will engage readers with its authoritative account of the rise of modern Reno and of the colorful history that lies beneath today’s neon and glitz.
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