You can't have an anniversary celebration without someone telling stories, so look to this volume for stories of Las Vegas' first 100 years. Moehring, a UNLV history professor who specializes in urban history and is author of Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930-2000; and Green, a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada and author of Nevada: A Journey of Discovery, are both experienced storytellers. Green is also responsible for writing the "Nevada Yesterdays" stories heard on public radio station KNPR.
This story of Las Vegas was written specifically for the city's 2005 centennial with the general reader in mind; footnotes have been replaced with an extensive bibliography for those interested in sources.
The book is well-illustrated. As Moehring explains, "Our goal as authors was not just to write a readable book, but also to convince the University of Nevada Press to intersperse up to 75 photographs throughout the narrative instead of the usual 10 or 12 in the middle of the book. The editor agreed, and we were able to use the photos to reinforce and document subjects we were covering in the narrative. It made for a more effective book."
The authors also wanted the history to be more than "a happy, coffee-table book," (and as a paperback, it doesn't have the look of a coffee-table book), and "Mike and I did not want to write a mere narrative. We stressed a few negative themes." For example, the authors took an unflinching look at the role played by racism and segregation in the city's early history. "Ours is the first history of Las Vegas to talk about the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan," Moehring says.
They also engaged in some policy analysis. "A main point in this regard," says Moehring, "is that we tried to counteract the Las Vegas Review-Journal's (position) that growth always pays for itself. We wanted to show that from 1930 to the present, growth was very expensive and that while most Las Vegans rejoiced at their city's expansion, they often groaned at the numerous bond issues for schools, road widenings, sewer expansions, and flood control."
The book is divided into 10 chapters, each an era in Las Vegas history. Antecedents, railroad, dam, World War II, tourism, gambling, the Strip, and growth are among the many topics that get their due in the course of the book.
In the preface, the authors comment, "As the city … celebrates its prodigious growth in the breathtakingly brief span of a single century, our objective is to explain why and how Las Vegas accomplished this growth and how it got to be the way it is today."
Las Vegas: A Centennial History has been awarded the 2005 Wilbur S. Shepperson Prize from the Nevada Humanities Committee and the University of Nevada Press.
