Don’t look to the television show Las Vegas for the scoop on the gaming industry today. Instead, curl up with this analysis of the rise in popularity of legal casino gaming in the United States.

Schwartz used the Lied Library’s collections to research his UCLA doctoral dissertation, from which this book was written. Gaming mogul Steve Wynn says of the book, “Schwartz shows us that the popularity of casinos is no accident, but part of larger trends in American history.” UNLV history professor Hal Rothman, author of his own studies of the Las Vegas phenomenon, calls it a “must for anyone who cares about culture in the new century.”

Schwartz grew up near Atlantic City, N.J., and took a job in casino security and surveillance while working on his degrees. “I was kind of an apprentice,” he says, declining to name the casino. “I left that casino three times, and each time I was free to come back,” he adds, in reference to the “apprentices” who have been fired by that casino’s owner.

When it came time to select a topic for his doctoral dissertation in history, Schwartz says, “I was curious about my surroundings, and I didn’t think anyone had done a really good job of explaining why casinos are designed the way they are.”

The book’s title, Suburban Xanadu, reflects both his observations of the appeal of casinos to middle-class Americans and the fantasy destination that his former employer created.

As for the show Las Vegas, which centers on a surveillance director, Schwartz says that if it was a reality show, “it would make terrible television. There is nothing happening most of the time. You occasionally get a few minutes of excitement, and people rarely leave the room to go to the casino floor, as the hero does in the TV show.”

Schwartz just finished another book on gambling prohibition and is working under contract on Roll the Bones, a history of gambling from the “dawn of time to today.”

Mayumi Itoh tells the story of a Japanese family that, much like the Kennedys in the United States, has played a major role in its country’s politics. The Hatoyama dynasty began in the mid- 19th century with Kazuo, a politician, professor at Tokyo Imperial University, and deputy foreign minister.

Kazuo’s son, Ichiro, was a member of the House of Representatives for 44 years and created the Liberal Democratic Party, a major force in Japanese politics since 1955. Altogether six Hatoyamas filled major political positions, and others became renowned scholars. Ichiro, who served in government through both world wars and the American occupation of Japan following WWII, ran afoul of Gen. Douglas McArthur over the issue of Japan’s military presence. He subsequently spent a number of years in exile.

Later those on both sides of the armed forces issue criticized Ichiro. Today, Japan is still grappling with the issue as U.S. President George W. Bush seeks assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan, Itoh says.

The third generation of politicians included Ichiro’s son, Iichiro, who reluctantly became foreign minister. “He personally detested politics,” Itoh says, “but family tradition required him to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

Of Iichiro’s sons, the elder is like his father and would prefer teaching engineering but has been pressured into politics; the younger embraced politics. Together they formed a new liberal political party to challenge the ruling conservative party that their grandfather had created 40 years before. “I had hopes and expectations for political and economic change in Japan,” Itoh says, but the two brothers later split, and the younger returned to the longtime ruling party.

Commenting on the current state of politics in Japan, Itoh says, “Young people are not interested because of the corrupt politics. They don’t take traditional values as seriously, and they don’t feel obliged to follow in the footsteps of their fathers.”

Itoh’s current project is to examine China-Japan relations from the mid-19th century to today.

For 16 years Boychuk-Spears has conducted forensic interviews with more than 3,000 children listed as victims or witnesses in criminal investigations. In 1997, she started the nation’s first forensic interview program for children who witness homicide with the Mesa, Ariz., police department and Arizona State University.

Boychuk-Spears says her book “is meant for professionals and families whose lives have been marked forever by exposure to the tragedies of human violence. … (It is) not the presentation of theory and formidable research findings. Instead, the book evolved from years of professional forensic and clinical work.”

When a child is the only witness to a violent event, authorities have the challenge of eliciting information they need for their investigation while not adding to the trauma the child has experienced. Boychuk-Spears offers interviewing principles appropriate to different age levels and backs up her advice with case-study results.

“The children and their resilience continue to astound me, but we need more resources.Most efforts today are for stabilization at the scene of the violence; we don’t devote many resources to follow up,” she says, noting that the subject becomes more complex as researchers continue to make discoveries in related issues, such as the neurobiological effects of trauma.

Boychuk-Spears will follow up with the people she studied for the book after five and 10 years to assess the longer-term impact of the violence they witnessed.

History professor and department chair Hal K. Rothman has been in these pages before with his forthright analyses of Western environment and culture. One of UNLV’s most prolific writers, Rothman this time turns his attention to the urban national park, an oxymoron to people used to thinking of national parks in terms of grand peaks, deep canyons, and other kinds of pristine scenery.

With public lands becoming scarce, Rothman suggests, the urban park may represent the future of national parks in the United States, and he presents the Golden Gate National Recreation Area as a model. He delves into the park’s history, the politics that accompanied the acquisition of the land, and the many challenges that national and local leaders faced in its development, and he does all this in his usual thoroughly researched and engaging style.