30 Illegal Years To The Strip: The Untold Stories Of The Gangsters Who Built The Early Las Vegas Strip

by Bill Friedman

Overview

30 Illegal Years To The Strip is the inside story of Prohibition's most powerful leaders, who later ran elegant, illegal casinos across America, before moving on to build the glamorous Las Vegas Strip gambling resorts.
The seven leaders of the three dominating Prohibition gangs imported the world's finest liquors on a massive scale. Although in an illegal and dangerous business, these seven espoused traditional business values and rejected the key tools of organized crime - monopoly, violence, and vendetta. This made them the most unlikely gangsters to rise to underworld leadership. But they earned every criminal's respect, and fate made them the most powerful gangland leaders in American history.
In the mid 1900s, these seven leaders stood up to, and restrained, America's worst villains. The seven prevented many gangland wars and killings. Unbelievably, the most murderous and most psychopathic gang leaders not only admired them but supported them in gangland conflicts.
These were the first gangs to work closely together in mutual interest. Joining these three dominating liquor-importers was the violent Chicago Capone gang, as they partnered in both illegal and legal businesses during and after Prohibition. They were also close allies in the complexities, treachery, and violence of underworld politics.
Exposed for the first time are the roles actually played by gang leaders Ben Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Charlie Luciano, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Al Capone, John Torrio, Frank Nitti, and Moe Dalitz.
Some of these seven leaders became powerful overworld political kingmakers. Allied with them in New York City politics was Arnold Rothstein, the ultimate gambler. His murder is one of several major gangland killings finally solved here.
The biggest-drawing entertainer in these gang leaders' illegal-casino and Strip-resort showrooms was comedian Joe E. Lewis. He single-handedly saved the Copacabana from bankruptcy and turned it into America's most famous and glamorous nightclub.
The careers and relationships of the gang leaders, who together would go on to build the Las Vegas Strip, are presented for the first time in this thoroughly documented, in-depth, authentic history of how organized crime developed. It contains 546 source notes, and many addendums that expose the serious fallacies and outright fictions of previous books about early organized crime.
This book is based on 48 years of research that began, when the author was drafted during the Vietnam War. A conscientious objector, he was ordered to spend his alternative service in Las Vegas hanging out with gangsters to study the history and operation of organized crime. (More info about this government-ordered study in About The Research at www.BillFriedmanAuthor.com)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781508529453
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	03/22/2015
Pages:	526
Sales rank:	1,021,875
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Bill Friedman wrote the award-winning, Depression era, true-crime All Against The Law. He wrote the groundbreaking research work Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition, published by the University of Nevada Reno. He is also author of the seminal book for succeeding in the casino business, Casino Management. He taught the pioneer course in casino management for UNLV's College of Hotel Administration during the decade of the 1970s.
Friedman was president of the Castaways Hotel and Casino and the Silver Slipper Casino in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip for thirteen years. He transformed them from perennial losers into super successes, consistently in the top of Nevada's highest profit-per-square-foot performers.
Friedman is president of the Friedman Management Group, which specializes in solving casino marketing, design, and operations problems. He has consulted for forty years to casinos in the U.S. and in England, Monaco, Russia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and several Caribbean Islands.
www.BillFriedmanAuthor.com

Editorial Reviews

2015-05-02
Friedman (All Against The Law, 2014, etc.) offers an in-depth account of the crime bosses of Prohibition-era America.Las Vegas was built by seven mobsters whom Friedman refers to as "The Young Turks"—Charlie Luciano, Giuseppe Doto (aka Joe Adonis), Meyer Lansky, Ben Siegel, Vincent Alo, Frank Costello, and Moe Dalitz. By working together out of New York—and successfully reigning in the murderous tendencies of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit—these gangsters eschewed the traditional underworld tactics of violence and monopoly to become the leaders of a multigang syndicate that dominated illegal liquor importation during Prohibition and later built the Las Vegas Strip ("The leaders...and their associates built 80% of the fabulous Strip resorts from the Flamingo in 1946 to Caesar's Palace in 1966"). This book seeks to recount the history of this syndicate during its pre-Vegas years; more ambitiously, it seeks to correct the gross misconceptions of these men that Friedman believes are held by the wider culture: "A number of biographical books have been written about these early organized-crime leaders, but all are seriously flawed for the following reasons. Not one of these writers ever interviewed their criminal subjects or their few close associates." Other revelations include that Arnold Rothstein did not fix the 1919 World Series, was never arrested or charged with any crime, and was not even terribly wealthy. Lucky Luciano was never involved in prostitution or murder (only gambling and rumrunning) and actually helped protect the port of New York from enemy agents during World War II. According to the book's supplemental materials (including many addendums, hundreds of endnotes, a four-page bibliography, and an extensive index), Friedman's account is the result of nearly five decades of research, including interviews with many former members of the gangs discussed. Most of Friedman's assertions don't upset the common wisdom so much as they fill in gaps in the common understanding. They offer a fascinating look at a little-documented world long dominated by speculation and Hollywood myth.An entertaining, highly detailed account of the lives of some very famous gangsters.

Kirkus Reviews