{"product_id":"the-strip-las-vegas-and-the-architecture-of-the-american-dream-9780262035743","title":"The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe transformations of the Stripfrom the fake Wild West to neon signs twenty stories high to starchitectureand how they mirror America itself. The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West  with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs  then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates  followed by replicas of Venetian canals  New York skyscrapers  and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently  the Strip decided to get classy  with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the implosion capital of the world as developers  driven by competition  got rid of the old to make way for the newoffering a non-metaphorical definition of creative destruction. In The Strip  Stefan Al examines the many transformations of the Las Vegas Strip  arguing that they mirror transformations in America itself. The Strip is not  as popularly supposed  a display of architectural freaks but representative of architectural trends and a record of social  cultural  and economic change. Al tells two parallel stories. He describes the feverish competition of Las Vegas developers to build the snazziest  most tourist-grabbing casinos and resortswith a cast of characters including the mobster Bugsy Siegel  the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes  and the would-be political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson. And he views the Strip in a larger social context  showing that it has not only reflected trends but also magnified them and sometimes even initiated them. Generously illustrated with stunning color images throughout  The Strip traces the many metamorphoses of a city that offers a vivid projection of the American dream.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45529524994101,"sku":"ByrdShop_026203574X","price":252.43,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780262035743.jpg?v=1780936586","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-strip-las-vegas-and-the-architecture-of-the-american-dream-9780262035743","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}