n Shannon Bybee: Evidence of a Serendipitous Career in Gaming

by Shannon Bybee
Pearson Custom Publishing

In his new book, Shannon Bybee, a 33-year veteran of the gaming industry, shares his careful observations of the global gaming industry with readers. Bybee is executive director of UNLV’s International Gaming Institute and teaches at the William S. Boyd School of Law.

Arranged in six sections, the book covers a variety of topics, from the history of the gaming industry to the management and regulatory practices of casino operations to the issue of problem gambling. Also included are examples of Bybee’s commitment to civic participation as well as an overview of education and employment prospects for future gaming executives.

“This book contains a diverse sample of the work Dr. Bybee has shared with his many colleagues and students during his long career,” said Dina Marie Zemke, a doctoral student at the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration and editor of the book. “Each selection contains powerful information that every gaming practitioner, regulator, and student can use.”

Prior to his appointment at UNLV in August 1994, Bybee worked for more than 20 years in the private sector, serving as president and chief operating officer of United Gaming Inc. (now Alliance Gaming Corp.); chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the Claridge Casino Hotel, Atlantic City; senior vice president of Golden Nugget, Inc.; and president of Golden Nugget Atlantic City Corp., which operated the Golden Nugget Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. He also served on the Nevada Gaming Control Board for more than four years and practiced law with a specialty in gaming regulatory issues.

The book, which was supported in part by a grant from the Ace Denken Company of Tokyo, Japan, can be purchased for $55 at UNLV’s International Gaming Institute, located at the corner of Flamingo Road and Swenson Street, or by calling (702) 895-3903.

n Las Vegas Then and Now

by Su Kim Chung
Thunder Bay Press, 2002

As a manuscripts librarian in the Lied Library’s special collections division, Su Kim Chung sees many interesting things, particularly about Las Vegas, and so was well placed when a London publisher wanted to add Las Vegas to its series about major American cities.

The book series pairs historical photographs with photographs of the same scene today. Chung had to select only 70 photos from special collection’s more than 40,000 images. She then researched what had happened to the buildings photographed.

“I worked with a London-based publishing house whose editor had only been to Las Vegas twice, so his main directive to me was to avoid at all costs a book that consisted of photos of the desert on the ‘then’ side and photos of giant casinos on the ‘now’ side,” Chung says. “The editors also had problems with the word ‘imploded,’ which I used in conjunction with captions for the Dunes and the Sands. They kept trying to replace it with more delicate words like ‘destroyed’ or ‘demolished,’ but I stuck to my guns and said you couldn’t write a book about Las Vegas and NOT use the word ‘imploded.’

“In selecting the photographs, I had to be conscious that every one had to be of a building or scene that could be located and reproduced by the photographer today,” Chung continues. “This sometimes led me to exclude interesting photos because I could not tell by any clues in the photo where it might have been taken. A photo of mules grazing along Boulder Highway was one that I really wanted to use but could not because of this problem.”

Chung, who has a master’s degree in history from California State University, Fresno, and a master’s degree in library and information science from UCLA, has been at UNLV since 1999.

 

n Dixie Looks Abroad: the South and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1789-1973

By Joseph "Andy" Fry
Louisiana State University Press, 2002

In Dixie Looks Abroad, history professor Joseph A. “Andy” Fry shows the quality of work that this year earned him recognition as a Distinguished Professor, the top award given by UNLV. Described as a “graceful and engaging narrative,” qualities that, together with solid scholarship, earned its selection by the History Book Club, Dixie Looks Abroad establishes the South as a major player in U.S. foreign relations.

Although Fry grew up on the fringes of the South, it is his fascination with foreign relations, honed when he went to graduate school at the University of Virginia, that has shaped his research. His first book grew out of his dissertation on Henry S. Sanford, “who was a ‘career diplomat’ before the U.S. government acknowledged such an animal,” Fry says. Sanford, minister to Belgium during the Civil War, was deeply involved in what was once known as Belgian Congo.

“Since Sanford was a Northerner, a Republican, and a diplomat, I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the same foreign policy issues from the perspective of John Tyler Morgan, a Southerner from Alabama, a Democrat, and a politician.” This decision led to a biography of Morgan. “In the course of understanding Morgan’s foreign policy connections, it became apparent to me that there had been no overall attempt to study the South and U.S. foreign relations.”

Fry not only sought to fill that gap, he also revived a UNLV course on Southern history.
Reflecting on writing Dixie Looks Abroad, Fry says, “I guess the best evidence of the project’s interest for me was that although the book was long – too long, in the writing – the topic was so engaging that I never lost interest. It truly remained fun from beginning to end.”

Fry’s research currently is examining the role of the South in the United State’s involvement in Vietnam, another topic that has been the focus of his classroom work.

n Six Books of Sonnets

By Vladimir Honsa
1st Book Library, 2000

When an academic retires, he or she does not leave intellectual life behind with the office keys. Many remain active in research or creative activity, continuing to write and publish. Vladimir Honsa, retired professor of Spanish and linguistics, for example, recently published Six Books of Sonnets.

Six Books is actually one volume with more than 700 pages. It opens with his most recent works, Sonnets of Flowers and Butterflies, written from 1982 to 2000, and concludes with Book One, Sonnets of the Death of Love, 1977-1978.

Honsa came to UNLV in 1970 from the University of Southern California, where he had been acting chair of the linguistics department. He held Fulbright professorships in Colombia and Uruguay prior to joining UNLV to teach Spanish and linguistics. He retired in 1988 and still lives in Las Vegas.

n At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia's Volga Kama Region, 1827-1905

By Paul W. Wrth
Cornell University Press, 2002

History professor Paul Werth’s first book delves into the history of Russia beyond its capitals of St. Petersburg and Moscow.

“I was drawn into the curious multi-national region around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers,” he says. “It didn’t take long to realize that there was more than enough material to sustain a decent dissertation on confessional politics in the region.”

The Volga and Kama rivers come together in the Republic of Tatarstan, in the center of the Russian Federation. Kazan, on the Volga, is its principal city, and Werth traveled there, as well as to the central Russian historical archives in St. Petersburg.

“Probably the most interesting story about this is that I met my wife in doing this research,” Werth said. His wife, Elizaveta Zueva, worked in the St. Petersburg archives, and they were thus thrown together frequently as she assisted in finding materials for his research. They have been in Las Vegas since 1999 and have a son.

Werth also spent seven months in 2001 researching a larger study of religious tolerance in Russia; it’s tentatively titled Arbiters of the Sacred: ‘Foreign Confessions’ and Religious Toleration in the Russian Empire, 1772-1914.