Book Reviews

"No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted," Hunter Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Michael Ventura, a columnist for the L.A. Weekly observed, "it isn't everyday that you're invited to a rehearsal for the Apocalypse. And imagine sharing it with someone." These guys have a clue about Las Vegas. Unfortunately, probably half of the writers in Literary Las Vegas (Henry Holt, $12.95) really don't. For the most part, their stories are stale rehashes of mythic Vegas; at worst, as with Marc Cooper's "Searching for Sin City and Finding Disneyland in the Desert," the pieces are illogical and mean-spirited diatribes filled with provably false misinformation. Many of the writers play the dispassionate observer and actually think they've figured out Las Vegas. Heh.

As uneven as this anthology is, it is worth it for the gems, both by famous guys like Thompson, and little-known authors like Phyllis Barber, whose piece on growing up in 50's Vegas is so good I went out and got a copy of her book How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir. And the transcript of Faith Francher and William Drummond's piece for National Public Radio, "Jim Crow for Black Performers" is a fine addition to the hidden history of this very strange place.

By Lenadams Dorris

It's deja vu all over again. Twenty-eight years after The Godfather, Mario Puzo's fat new book about a Mafia family with a casino in Las Vegas, The Last Don (Random House, $25.95) reveals no new news from the underworld. There's the cunning Old World Papa, ready to retire and usher his family from the brutal bad old businesses of drugs and porn into brutal legitimate gangster activity, like casinos, movies, stocks and bonds. He's surrounded by a pack of offspring elbowing to succeed him. After half a dozen gory murders, including the obligatory massacre-of-a-whole-rival-family-in-one-fell-swoop, good looks ultimately triumph over evil, the Bad Guys in Hollywood are left to eat each other, and the Don dies happy, his family ensconced in legitimate society.

If you piled them on top of each other, The Last Don's cliches would reach the top of the Stratosphere. Puzo makes all card dealers money launderers and all women (waitresses, showgirls, whatever) prostitutes. It made me glad he didn't acknowledge the existence of maids, porters, slot-mechanics, or the other 200,000 workers that keep Las Vegas casinos running smoothly.

Like Casino and Showgirls, Puzo focuses on the high-rollers, mobsters, executives and good-looking broads with voracious appetites for furs and jewels. One grows quickly bored with the endless descriptions of luxury, wealth, power and beauty. Lia Vazzi, a simple Sicilian soul, hits the nail on the head in his description of the Xanadu Casino's exclusive high-roller villas: "What nonsense. So beautiful. To what purpose? Why does anyone have to live like that? It is too much. It takes away your strength. It arouses envy. It's not clever to insult the poor like that. Why then would they not want to kill you?" The jacket says The Last Don is "Soon to be a major motion picture." I say, "Wait for the video."

by Kit Miller

The latest trend in children's books is to gather a correct smattering of multiracial cherubs together in a white-bread suburban story. Too often the faces are diverse but the background is the same old Dick and Jane. Native Americans rarely make an appearance and when they do they are too often cast as characters in some mythic past, not as living breathing members of the modern world.

Ann Herbert Scott's new book, Brave as a Mountain Lion (Clarion Books, $14.95), takes us to the Owyhee Indian Reservation in northern Nevada and into the home of Spider, who is scared to death of an upcoming spelling bee. Through the week he gains confidence from his dad, grandmother, and brother, who advise him to be brave as a lion, clever as a coyote, and silent as a spider. Scott subtly shows the extended family, the ranching lifestyle, and native traditions that are the fabric of reservation life.

Glo Cloason's sublime illustrations settle us in the warm living room, where you can almost smell the boot leather and deer meat. Outside, the horses and dogs huddle against a snowstorm. And in the school gym on the night of the big event the whole community comes to life.

With this book, Scott adds another rich layer to her portraits of life in the Great Basin from a kid's point-of-view.

by Kit Miller