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Becoming Americas Playground
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Book Synopsis Becoming America's Playground by : Larry Dale Gragg
Download or read book Becoming America's Playground written by Larry Dale Gragg and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The story of the emergence of Las Vegas as the premier tourist destination in the nation during the pivotal decade of the 1950s"--
Book Synopsis Becoming America's Playground by : Larry D. Gragg
Download or read book Becoming America's Playground written by Larry D. Gragg and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1950 Las Vegas saw a million tourists. In 1960 it attracted ten million. The city entered the fifties as a regional destination where prosperous postwar Americans could enjoy vices largely forbidden elsewhere, and it emerged in the sixties as a national hotspot, the glitzy resort city that lights up the American West today. Becoming America’s Playground chronicles the vice and the toil that gave Las Vegas its worldwide reputation in those transformative years. Las Vegas’s rise was no happy accident. After World War II, vacationing Americans traveled the country in record numbers, making tourism a top industry in such states as California and Florida. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce saw its chance and developed a plan to capitalize on the town’s burgeoning reputation for leisure. Las Vegas pinned its hopes for the future on Americans’ need for escape. Transforming a vice city financed largely by the mob into a family vacation spot was not easy. Hotel and casino publicists closely monitored media representations of the city and took every opportunity to stage images of good, clean fun for the public—posing even the atomic bomb tests conducted just miles away as an attraction. The racism and sexism common in the rest of the nation in the era prevailed in Las Vegas too. The wild success of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack performances at the Sands Hotel in 1960 demonstrated the city’s slow progress toward equality. Women couldn’t work as dealers in Las Vegas until the 1970s, yet they found more opportunities for well-paying jobs there than many American women could find elsewhere. Gragg shows how a place like the Las Vegas Strip—with its glitz and vast wealth and its wildly public consumption of vice—rose to prominence in the 1950s, a decade of Cold War anxiety and civil rights conflict. Becoming America’s Playground brings this pivotal decade in Las Vegas into sharp focus for the first time.
Book Synopsis Satan's Playground by : Paul J Vanderwood
Download or read book Satan's Playground written by Paul J Vanderwood and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Satan’s Playground chronicles the rise and fall of the tumultuous and lucrative gambling industry that developed just south of the U.S.-Mexico border in the early twentieth century. As prohibitions against liquor, horse racing, gambling, and prostitution swept the United States, the vice industry flourished in and around Tijuana, to the extent that reformers came to call the town “Satan’s Playground,” unintentionally increasing its licentious allure. The area was dominated by Agua Caliente, a large, elegant gaming resort opened by four entrepreneurial Border Barons (three Americans and one Mexican) in 1928. Diplomats, royalty, film stars, sports celebrities, politicians, patricians, and nouveau-riche capitalists flocked to Agua Caliente’s luxurious complex of casinos, hotels, cabarets, and sports extravaganzas, and to its world-renowned thoroughbred racetrack. Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Louis B. Mayer, the Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, and the boxer Jack Dempsey were among the regular visitors. So were mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel, who later cited Agua Caliente as his inspiration for building the first such resort on what became the Las Vegas Strip. Less than a year after Agua Caliente opened, gangsters held up its money-car in transit to a bank in San Diego, killing the courier and a guard and stealing the company money pouch. Paul J. Vanderwood weaves the story of this heist gone wrong, the search for the killers, and their sensational trial into the overall history of the often-chaotic development of Agua Caliente, Tijuana, and Southern California. Drawing on newspaper accounts, police files, court records, personal memoirs, oral histories, and “true detective” magazines, he presents a fascinating portrait of vice and society in the Jazz Age, and he makes a significant contribution to the history of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Book Synopsis Atlas of Another America by : Keith Krumwiede
Download or read book Atlas of Another America written by Keith Krumwiede and published by Park Publishing (WI). This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Owning a home is a cornerstone of the American Dream, the ultimate status symbol in the land of the free. But is the dream in crisis? Mass-marketed and endlessly multiplied, the suburban single-family house has become an instrument of global economic calamity and ongoing environmental catastrophe. Never before have we been so badly in need of a reassessment of our cultural values from an architectural perspective."--Back cover.
Book Synopsis The State Park Movement in America by : Ney C. Landrum
Download or read book The State Park Movement in America written by Ney C. Landrum and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2013-08-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essentially a phenomenon of the twentieth century, America’s pioneering state park movement has grown rapidly and innovatively to become one of the most important forces in the preservation of open spaces and the provision of public outdoor recreation in the country. During this time, the movement has been influenced and shaped by many factors—social, cultural, and economic—resulting in a wide variety of expressions. While everyone agrees that the state park movement has been a positive and beneficial force on the whole, there seems to be an increasing divergence of thought as to exactly what direction the movement should take in the future. In The State Park Movement in America, Ney Landrum, recipient of almost two dozen honors and awards for his service to state and national parks, places the movement for state parks in the context of the movements for urban and local parks on one side and for national parks on the other. He traces the evolution of the state park movement from its imprecise and largely unconnected origins to its present status as an essential and firmly established state government responsibility, nationwide in scope. Because the movement has taken a number of separate, but roughly parallel, paths and produced differing schools of thought concerning its purpose and direction, Landrum also analyzes the circumstances and events that have contributed to these disparate results and offers critical commentary based on his long tenure in the system. As the first study of its kind, The State Park Movement in America will fill a tremendous void in the literature on parks. Given that there are more than five thousand state parks in the United States, compared with fewer than five hundred national parks and historic sites, this history is long overdue. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with federal, state, or local parks, as well as to land resource managers generally.
Download or read book Minor Feelings written by Cathy Park Hong and published by One World. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE • A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness “Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen In development as a television series starring and adapted by Greta Lee • One of Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, New Statesman, BuzzFeed, Esquire, The New York Public Library, and Book Riot Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth. Praise for Minor Feelings “Hong begins her new book of essays with a bang. . . .The essays wander a variegated terrain of memoir, criticism and polemic, oscillating between smooth proclamations of certainty and twitches of self-doubt. . . . Minor Feelings is studded with moments [of] candor and dark humor shot through with glittering self-awareness.”—The New York Times “Hong uses her own experiences as a jumping off point to examine race and emotion in the United States.”—Newsweek “Powerful . . . [Hong] brings together memoiristic personal essay and reflection, historical accounts and modern reporting, and other works of art and writing, in order to amplify a multitude of voices and capture Asian America as a collection of contradictions. She does so with sharp wit and radical transparency.”—Salon
Book Synopsis New Guardians for the Golden Gate by : Amy Meyer
Download or read book New Guardians for the Golden Gate written by Amy Meyer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National parks are a distinctively American idea. But it takes people to make them happen. This unique, insider's account tells how Bay Area activists forged bipartisan local and national support for an unprecedented campaign to create a great new national park. In 1970, beginning with the former Army lands originally reserved to protect San Francisco Bay, the grassroots People for a Golden Gate National Recreation Area succeeded in preserving all of the spectacular land that frames the Golden Gate. Spanning more than thirty eventful years, Amy Meyer tells the story of how dedicated citizens, including visionary conservationist Edgar Wayburn, master politician Phillip Burton, and a battalion of lesser-known but key allies made our democratic system work for the common good and won their fight to save these dramatic and historic lands for all of the American people. Pictures by noted California photographers capture the park’s grandeur and new activities. New Guardians for the Golden Gate tells how a bold vision, dedicated citizens, and a variety of old and new conservation strategies saved these magnificent lands for all time.
Book Synopsis The New Adventure Playground Movement: How Communities Across the USA Are Returning Risk and Freedom to Childhood by : Morgan Leichter-Saxby
Download or read book The New Adventure Playground Movement: How Communities Across the USA Are Returning Risk and Freedom to Childhood written by Morgan Leichter-Saxby and published by . This book was released on 2015-02-23 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Morgan Leichter-Saxby and Suzanna Law got into their little yellow car for the first time, they knew that an adventure of a lifetime was about to begin. Their objective was to connect play advocates in communities across the USA that had reached out to them to become part of their tour through a series of workshops and events. What they didn't know was how great that adventure would be, how many wonderful people they would meet along the way, and what a huge impact the tour would have, both on communities and themselves. This book provides an overview of the 2014 Pop-Up Adventure Play tour, detailing images, interviews and anecdotes, inviting the reader along for the ride. There is also the inclusion of many resources to help you on your own journey, allowing you to build your community around play-and maybe even enabling you to start an adventure playground of your own.
Book Synopsis America's Park and Recreation Heritage by : Carlton S. Van Doren
Download or read book America's Park and Recreation Heritage written by Carlton S. Van Doren and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Appian Way of America written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Death of the Playground by : Kurt Philip Behm
Download or read book The Death of the Playground written by Kurt Philip Behm and published by Author House. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Death Of The Playground talks about the tragic loss of 'Free-Play' in America. Our Public Playgrounds were the places where it all happened, where developing boys could learn together to, : First sit and watch and learn from those older : Truly become an important part of a group and fit in : Make up their own games and improvise : That to have friends you must first be a friend : Handle disappointment and that life isn't always fair : Realize that all great things take time : To become part of something bigger than just themselves THIS ONE WAS MOST IMPORTANT ! On the Playground, they did all of this without DIRECT Parent or Adult supervision. They made up their own rules of play, picked their own games, decided for themselves what was fair, and learned to live with the consequences. All of this doesn't mean Parents weren't involved; they were. They just weren't over-involved! Kids raised with their parents doing everything for them, then 'grow up' and want their government to do the same thing. I think we all know where that road leads. America's Corporations desperately need the developing titans, like the ones that fought and won two World Wars, created the powerful multi-national corporations, and wrote the great books of the 20th century. The chain connecting boyhood to manhood is now broken. Let me take you back to find the missing link. Revisit with me the Playground of my childhood, and share with me the pure joy and magic of my 8 years of 'Free-Play.' It's not too late to recapture that magic for our children, but we have to act and we have to act soon. Kurt Philip Behm Website: http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=54309 Available: Amazon, B&N, Borders, Most Independents, Author House
Book Synopsis The Politics of Park Design by : Galen Cranz
Download or read book The Politics of Park Design written by Galen Cranz and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1982 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Galen Cranz surveys the rise of the park system from 1850 to the present through 4 stages - the pleasure ground, the reform park, the recreation facility and the open space system.
Download or read book Elgin Park written by Michael Paul Smith and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elgin Park is a miniature town created by the author and inspired by the author's hometown, Sewickley, Pennsylvania, in the 1940'sand 1950's. - p. 6.
Book Synopsis Variations on a Theme Park by : Michael Sorkin
Download or read book Variations on a Theme Park written by Michael Sorkin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1992-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's cities are being rapidly transformed by a sinister and homogenous design. A new Kind of urbanism--manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space--is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places, it's the theme park, an apparently benign environment in which all is structured to achieve maximum control and in which the idea of authentic interaction among citizens has been thoroughly purged. In this bold collection, eight of our leading urbanists and architectural critics explore the emblematic sites of this new cityscape--from Silicon Valley to Epcot Center, South Street Seaport to downtown Los Angeles--and reveal their disturbing implications for American public life.
Download or read book Forest Park written by Kenneth J. Knack and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beer, biers, and more beer . . . the name Forest Park will usually evoke images of taverns or cemeteries. While both have played an important role in the prosperity and growth of the community, there is so much more to this community once known as Harlem. Originally the site of a Potawatomi Indian village and burial ground, the town has also been home to an amusement park, a torpedo factory, a golf course, a racetrack, and a baseball stadium. The blue-collar sibling to neighbors Oak Park and River Forest has weathered many changes. Prohibition during the 1920s saw the closure of 39 taverns. The building of the Congress Expressway in the 1950s forced the relocation of over 3,500 graves, dozens of homes and businesses, destroyed landmarks, and severed the town. Through it all, Forest Park has persevered, though much of its past has disappeared.
Book Synopsis Imagineering an American Dreamscape by : Barry R. Hill
Download or read book Imagineering an American Dreamscape written by Barry R. Hill and published by . This book was released on 2020-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dorney Park written by Wally Ely and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dorney Park boasts a rich history. In this collection of vintage-photograph postcards, Wally Ely and Bob Ott explore the park's past.
