Böcker av Al W Moe

Chicago was the worldwide leader in gangster wars and bootlegging in the 1920s, as Al Capone set the stage for his tremendous success and popularity. When he was safely away in prison, the Chicago Outfit expanded into more rackets involving gambling and loan sharking, making bosses like Paul "The Waiter" Ricca and Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo rich beyond even Capone's wildest dreams. With prostitution and union corruption, Chicago had more bookies, card clubs, and clip joints than evil casino spots like Reno, Hot Springs, Toledo, and New York combined. So, they weren't the first to find gold in Las Vegas, but they were sure good at draining the cash away once they tasted Sin City's pleasures and corruption! For forty years, Chicago led the way in untaxed and hidden money by skimming at often crooked games of no-chance. When Las Vegas jumped in the early '40s, the Outfit's interests in Las Vegas captured the Downtown area and went uptown to the Strip and the new Flamingo casino. To keep everything straight, Las Vegas imported known killers as local enforcers from the Outfit like Marshall Caifano and Tony "The Ant" Spilotro. Things went Chicago's way for decades as the Chicago Outfit drained hundreds of millions of dollars from a dozen Las Vegas casinos. How they did the deed right in front of the FBI, how it went untraced for decades, and how they moved the cash from the desert to places across the US and Europe is all right here in "Vegas and the Chicago Outfit."

Reno was truly Hell on Wheels in the 1920's. The rest of the nation considered the town Sodom and Gomorra, but that's only half the truth. Reno offered everything in the way of adult entertainment, from speakeasy's and houses of ill-repute, to open gaming - legal or not. And it took plenty of sins by the founding fathers to make Reno "The biggest little city in the world."When the gold-veins of Tonopah and Goldfield ran out, the casino owners moved to Reno, where even greater riches awaited. Together, a group of four men (Nick Abelman, Bill Graham, Jim McKay, George Wingfield) took over Reno's casinos and held sway over the town for the next three decades. Together they administered policy, collected juice, ran politicians, and owned the red-light district and most of the town's casinos.When that wasn't enough they took over the banks and laundered money for crooks like "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Alvin Karpis, and Ma Barker's boys, and offered safety to "Baby Face" Nelson. It was a good gig.The Reno Four dictated policy all over Northern Nevada, taking special care of Reno and Lake Tahoe casinos up until the late 1950's. Their influence made Reno before Bill Harrah or "Pappy" Smith ever arrived, needing an introduction and permission to build their own casinos, Harold's Club and Harrah's.This is an expansion, an unabridged version of "Mob City - Reno" with much to tell about Nevada's gold mining towns.

Over 70 Vintage Photos of Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe in this Edition! Before "Bugsy" Siegel" opened the Flamingo casino and created the Las Vegas Strip, the Mob was hard at work stealing Downtown casinos like the Las Vegas Club and the El Cortez from their original owners. Reno casino owners resorted to arson and murder to keep their money flowing, and they had Lake Tahoe casinos in their pocket too!Nevada's Golden Age of Gambling is a photo-rich history of the casinos from 1931 to 1981. All about the building of empires from Reno and Lake Tahoe to Las Vegas and a dozen other Nevada casino towns.Stories detail how the casinos were built, who the major gaming pioneers were, and how they managed to build Nevada from a agriculture and mining based economy into the greatest gaming empire in the world.Chapters include the history of casinos and their founders from Bill Harrah and "Pappy" Smith, to Moe Dalitz, "Bugsy" Siegel, and dozens of others.