5 comments about Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas.

1. A great summation of the last 15 years of Las Vegas, the influences that made it what it is, and the big personalities that rule the land. One negative comment I have is the movie is really two stories in one, Wynn/Kerkorian their deal and influence, and how Loveman/Harrahs elbowed its way from a smalltime operator to major player.
   
   The majority of the book is about Wynn and his influence in Las Vegas and how it developed from the Mirage to the Bellagio to the Wynn. And of course the big occurrence is the buyout of Wynn's operation by Kerkorian when he senses the stock weakness caused by Wynn's lack of management skills. A very fascinating story!
   
   After completing the acquisition the book slows down somewhat as it tells the tale of middle market Harrah's and how it busts into the big time by acquiring Ceasar's. This book explores the mathematical focus at Harrah's and how it increases profitablity. While it's interesting reading how a glorified math professor rises to casino president while retaining his old lifestyle, this section is the least interesting at least for me.
   
   In summary this is a fascinating read of a fascinating city. Just a walk down the strip let's anyone see every part of American culture good and bad as Las Vegas is the mecca of most Americans at some point in their lives.



2. Binkley presents an insightful and lively account of some of the players who operate in a world where nothing succeeds like excess. It is a world that the author knows well from her years of having covered the industry as a Wall Street Journal reporter, but, despite being granted unprecedented access to Las Vegas' movers and shakers, she remains a detached observer. From backroom deal-making to outsized egos to glitzy spectaculars, Binkley covers it all with a sprightly writing style, providing insights into what makes men like Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, and Gary Loveman tick.
   
   It was a world I knew nothing about other than a few business trips to Las Vegas, but I found the book highly entertaining and learned a lot about how about how three very different visionaries plotted a path to success. I will enjoy my next business trip to Sin City much more having read this book. I recommend it highly.



3. I just visited Las Vegas and loved it, it was much better than I expected it to be after having toured all around Europe! I bought this book at the airport book store in Vegas as the assistant said that was the book everyone had been asking after. It was a fascinating and entertaining read, with particularly inside information on how Steve Wynn approaches business and also how it contrasts with that of Kirk Kerkorian and Gary Loveman at Harrahs.
   
   I couldn't put it down and recommend it to anyone who has visited Las Vegas and is wondering how it go to be the town that it is today.



4. The Wall Street Journal reporter Christina Binkley was that paper's lead reporter in Las Vegas for 10 years. In "Winner Takes All" she pulls together that experience - both the knowledge and her contacts - and delivers a compelling, enthralling narrative of Vegas' transformation over that period.
   
   The book's sub-title says "Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman and the Race to Own Las Vegas." Binkley posits that a series of mega-deals have apportioned Vegas into three controlling companies: MGM Mirage (headed by Kirkorian); Wynn (Steve Wynn's eponymous new post-Mirage venture); and Harrah's (helmed by ex-Harvard prof Loveman). Binkley appears to have had little access to Kerkorian, (no one does, but read Bill Vlasic's classic Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off With Chrysler for a better peek at him) but ample access to his lieutenants. She obviously had developed a cordial relationship with Loveman. What stands out is her relationship with Wynn and wife Elaine. It's extensive, to say the least. She's clearly enchanted with the guy.
   
   In fact, that relationship leads me to my major problem with the book - it simply lacks credibility to leave Sheldon Adelson - Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sand Corporation (Venetian, Sands Convention Center, Palazzo) - out of the story. He, as much as anyone, set the pace for Vegas during Binkley's years of coverage. And, he made the leap to Macao ahead of any of his Vegas peers. It's blatantly obvious from the text that Ms. Binkley has a history with Adelson. Yes, he's famously dyspeptic and probably has little use for her. But Adelson has also feuded publicly and nastily with Steve Wynn. Wynn uses Binkley here quite transparently to take a number of gratuitous slams at Adelson. She's little more than a water-carrier in that regard. That's sad because it detracts from the overall excellence of the book in a very distracting way.
   
   A tale of the tape:
   
   p. 89 - Adelson described as a "would-be mogul" who "irked Wynn"
   
   p. 93 - Adelson is "warring with Wynn"
   
   p. 209 - Adelson described as Wynn's "nemesis and neighbor"
   
   p. 250 - The "eccentric" Adelson takes Sands public and is "catapulted from obscurity to number 19 on the Forbes 400" (Hello?? COMDEX, anyone? This guy was hardly obscure pre-Sands; his success was far from the luck and accident implied here).
   
   p. 271 - 272 - Wynn takes a moment to "pity" Adelson...'It's too bad he's not in better health and able to enjoy it more. He's in a wheelchair.' That's cold, man.
   
   p. 276 - "Loveman lost the Singapore bid to Sheldon Adelson." Adelson didn't win it, right? Loveman lost it. It's like Adelson and team had no role and won by default. Hardly.
   
   I've not cherry-picked the negative references - those are the ONLY references! Juvenile stuff. What a shame.



5. I'm sure I'll see Las Vegas in a different light after reading this book. You can't help but be fascinated by these larger-than-life characters. Steve Wynn is without a doubt the most interesting character in the book, but viewing the city as a competition between titans is something I've never really comprehended on trips to the Strip before. It's a great easy read, with lots of interesting facts. I agree with some reviewers who had problems following the (hazy) timeline, but it didn't diminish from the overall enjoyment.

5 comments about The Complete Idiot's Guide to Football (2nd Edition).

1. I'm a Chinese girl and never watched any American football games in Hong Kong until I married to an American and moved to United States one and half years ago. He is a football fan and he keeps track his team every day, not to mention especially during the regular season every Sunday.
   
   I started to watch football games with him, and I liked it a lot. Now, I understand why so many American like football. I asked many questions while I was watching the game, because I wanted to understand it more. Therefore, I read this book last year and it gave me a lot of basic information in an easy way. More interesting is the book gives many statistics and facts that I was impressed by the football business. Anyone has no idea about football, this book can help.
   
   Now, my husband was surprised that I knew football so well and we discussed football a lot during the regular season this year. This book helps us to have more conversation topics.



2. I like the straightforwardness of the writing, and the insight into the appeal of the game. Alas, if you're an outsider hoping to learn the game from scratch, you're going to have a lot of trouble--after teaching you rudimentary terms, the writers start describing the game as if you've been watching it all your life, tossing barely-introduced jargon around all over the place. I was really disappointed that the one aspect of the game I was most interested in (the actual GAME) was so poorly rendered.



3. I love football and i know some things about this sport, but this guide gives you a complete step by step explanation.
   Great for all fans



4. I knew a little about football to begin with so the first part of the book was helpful, but the rest of the book got too technical, completely lost me. If you know nothing of the game the first part might even be a challenge.



5. This book has helped me a lot. I did know some things, but it was extremely helpful to me.

5 comments about Frommer's Hawaii 2008 (Frommer's Complete).

1. This is a bulky book but ideal for hotel selection and restaurant choices and comparisons. Frommers has always been a solid standby on all our vacations and we always buy their updated editions. Two other guides we had along were the "Lonely Planet Hawaii" (like the cover) and "No Worries Hawaii" (colourful) which were highly recommended on an internet travel site. LP was carefree and offbeat and NW was our sturdy "go-to" resource. The Frommer's approach was friendly but plowing through the pages took up time and we were glad we brought all three.



2. I relied on this book heavily for advice while I honeymooned in Hawaii and it delivered. It was comprehensive and informative. I would recommend it to all vacationers who like a packed, encompassing, and active vacation



3. This is the first book I bought when I began planning my husband and I's weeklong honeymoon trip to Oahu at the end of this year when he comes back from Iraq. It's packed full of information on all five Islands and I thoroughly read the "Where to Stay" portion of the Oahu section first to plan out the details of our lodging first so reservations could be made well in advance. The descriptions are very thorough as to what hotels offer, where they are located, how to contact them and how much they cost (they are categorized by location and lumped into "Very Expensive, Expensive, Moderate, and Inexpensive" categories), and even has information on lesser-known hotels, bed and breakfasts, and beach cottages for rental that you won't find on many travel Web sites. However, since the book was only written by one person, the impressions and reviews of the hotels, dining places and activities is a bit more objective than a book written by several reviewers would be. I went online and read many, many reviews from other people who had stayed in the hotels before I made my decision. However, I DID find the best link for guest reviews (tripadvisor.com) from a suggestion in the book.
   
   Overall, this is a good starting point purchase in planning a Hawaiian vacation. I will definitely be taking it with me.



4. I've read this book from front to back and found it to be very informative. I can't wait to go on my trip and enjoy all the wonderful things that were described in the book.



5. We used this book to plan excursions for an upcoming cruise. It was very helpful, enabling us to prioritize how we want to spend our time.

5 comments about On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894.

1. This book is written in a much different style than the other Little House books. Laura kept a journal of the trip and these are her day-to-day entries. It can sometimes be dry or confusing. I have been reading the series with my daughter and this one has been a little more difficult. We enjoyed it, but not as much as the others.



2. It's often said in tones of this-is-true-but-it's-also-heresy that Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura and Almanzo Wilder, is the real unsung heroine in the Little House books, because while she let her mother have credit for the famous series, it was Rose, via her careful, invisible editing and re-writes, that turned cheery memoirs into beloved classics. I suspect that's true, but in the case of this book, it is beyond all doubt what happened. Rose took her mother's raw diary and prepared it for publication, and the product is the book On The Way Home, which tells of the journey Rose and her parents made in 1894, from DeSmet, South Dakota, setting for the final half of the Little House books, to the Ozark country, where the family would spend the next sixty years. The description is unsentimental, not glamorized (as it tends to be--for the sake of betterment--in the other books) and it paints a portrait of the difficult traveler's life on the by-then crowded prairie overrun with east-central European immigrants, many of whom being exactly the type portrayed in novels such as My Antonia. The Wilder family completes its draining re-location by covered wagon and arrives in Missouri, a state so much a promised land to them that a reader cannot help but share their relief when they safely arrive.



3. I can see why Laura Ingalls was able to write such good books about her early life on the Prairie. Her diaries were packed full of information and detail which she could later draw on. This is one of her diaries, with notes and a setting by her only child, daughter Rose Wilder Lane who was just a girl during this trip.
   
   Laura Ingalls Wilder is, of course, famous for her little House books describing her childhood growing up at the edge of American settling in the mid Nineteenth century. Constantly pushing to new territories and places Ingalls father lead them west into Indian territory and later to Dakota where they settled. Laura met and Married Almanzo Wilder in de Smet, Dakota (Those happy Golden Years, and First Four Years) however those books left a me feeling a bit downhearted. Especially teh First Four Years, in which Almanzo 'Manly' and Laura seemed to be struck with tragedy (the house burning down) etc.
   
   I found this diary to be hugely uplifting. It is not the detailed stories of her childhood, or living in a wagon as an adult settler, but it is a great tale detail of a family moving, of finding something which they could call their own, but far away in the Ozarks.
   
   The most interesting thing to me about it, was that while they were on the road they were constantly being passed by other settlers, some going north and others going south, but the number of people on the move was amazing. At one point Rose adds a note that she looked back while they were about to cross the 'muddy' and there was a stream of covered wagons behind them.
   
   Little details of what life was like really draw this out - tomatoes 10c a bushel and so they bought 2c worth. Huge watermelons for 5 c, Almanzo selling fire mats (ASBESTOS!) and all those little everyday details about life for Laura.
   
   While she did not put her stories down until many decades later, clearly she was a writer in the making right from the beginning. Rose, her daughter has provided much of the detail necessary in here, but it would be really nice to see an illustrated edition of this showing the place as it was and as it is now. It was interesting to use Google Earth to view some of the trail which you can see right now. It gives it a sense of scale which I will not be able to do myself unless I acutally visit.
   
   The only reason this has four stars is it is not as gripping as Ingalls novels - it is still a great read and highly recommended.



4. The Book, On The Way Home, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, is basically what it says it is. It is a Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894. This book was not that enjoyable just because it was just diary entries, like "today we ate meat." But other wise it was quite intriguing to discover the ways in which people traveled back in the day. In one part of the book it talks about how their covered wagon is not a covered wagon at all but that, "It had been a two-seated hack though now it only had the front seat." I also found it very enjoyable to read about the worth of money back then and compare it to now. It talks about how Laura had earned a whole one hundred dollars which today is like penny cash but back then was a fortune. In the beginning of the book there is a setting by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's Daughter, which is a great piece of writing, it is like the rest of Laura's books in that it makes you want to read the rest of the book. I found this book interesting but a drag because of the slow pace in the book. If you would like to take a slow dip into history you should definitely read this book.



5. This Laura Ingalls Wilder diary is somewhat dull in parts, but the introduction by her daugher, Rose Wilder Lane, is worth the price of the book. Lane gives a first-hand account of the days before and after the journey that puts Laura in a new light. There are also several good photographs unavailable in other LHOTP books.

4 comments about Frommer's New Orleans 2008 (Frommer's Complete).

1. This guide provides a variety of interesting facts about New Orleans, its culture and history, as well as information for selecting activities, restaurants, tours, and other in and about New Orleans. Very helpful as a pre-trip planner, and its maps assist getting about while there. It also gives a brief section about Katrina's impact.



2. I purchased this book for a recent trip to New Orleans and found it a valuable resource, both for myself as a somewhat frequent visitor to the city and for my boyfriend, who was experiencing this wonderful place for the first time. We were guided to some absolute restaurant gems, both inside and outside of the Quarter, and to some fabulous music venues. We also spent our days on the recommended walking tours (the book pays for itself in walking tours alone--you will see and learn about a great deal of history and beautiful architecture at your own pace without being stuck in a group). The post-Katrina information was helpful and up-to-date, especially considering that so many businesses and services are still in a state of transition. The Frommer's guide enhanced our New Orleans experience immeasurably, and I would recommend it to anyone planning a trip to the Big Easy.



3. I have now almost worn out my second copy of this book and have been thinking I need to invest in a third. This is THE best travel guide to New Orleans (actually, to any destination, come to think of it) I have ever read. I bought three or four different guides before my first trip to New Orleans; this is the one that made the others unnecessary. Many NOLA trips later, this book that still goes with me every time I return. In this Frommer's edition, Mary Herczog's voice is not so much that of a travel expert--although she is indeed that, and her advice is thorough and invaluable. But reading her pages is like having a friend in New Orleans--a native who knows all the good stuff, has all the real stories, knows the places YOU would want to visit. Her style is warm and conversational; her knowledge exhaustive, well-organized, and accessible. I've made so many margin notes "in answer" to her entries that my book has become as much a dialogue as a guidebook. Ten trips later, I am still learning from it.



4. This is the best book I've seen on visiting New Orleans. Very comprehensive, in fact just a very good read, even if you're not intending to visit in the near future. Looking forward even more to our holiday in New Orleans with the information in this book.
   Recommended!

5 comments about No Worries Hawaii: A Vacation Planning Guide for Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island.

1. My boyfriend and I just returned from Hawaii and spent one week on Maui and two weeks on the Big Island. We easily decided to visit these two islands after cruising through No Worries Hawaii.
   
   The guide sections off every island for you and highlights what's hot and holds your hand getting through the reservation system so you can get the best deals. Knowing the location we wanted to stay proved important and how to ask the right questions helped so much. Upper floor, end unit, away from the pool was right for us.
   
   Plenty of pictures, plenty of practical advice sold us over and over. I'm sitll wondering how they got so much good stuff inside in such an organized fashion. I guess because they have already plenty of experience writing guides for each island for 20 years. Read them, they know what they're talking about.



2. We loved this colorful guide with all its photos of all the Hawaiian islands. If you want to experience Hawaii's outdoors from more than a car window this is the resource to use. Superbly organized with a spark of humor and wit. A sane approach for tackling your vacation itinerary. We take it down from our shelf often and dream away. Next stop: Kauai.



3. This book helped me chose Kaua'i for my recent trip and I couldn't be happier. Highly recommended if you are going to Hawaii for the first time and aren't sure how to plan your trip. I think its usefulness is limited to planning though. I left it at home once I decided on Kaua'i.



4. I truely was surprised how much information was available and delighted by the travel possibilities to corners of Hawaii that I never thought of visiting. I found the itinerary planning part of the book most useful and interesting. The photos blew me away and tempted me to call United for a flight to the Big Island.



5. We're back from three weeks in Hawaii where we visited Maui and Oahu and Kauai - one week on each island. This is the excellent guide that made our holiday so rewarding with all its good to do's and not to do's. We saved by renting our own snorkeling equipment and following the directions to their recommeded beach zones. Same for kayaking. Their Wikiwiki Phonebook in the back pages held all the necessary numbers and our hotel allowed free local calls. We experienced total tropicland immersion and so many "oh wow's".

2 comments about 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.

1. I just received a copy of this book a few days ago and I've really enjoyed looking at all of the colorful pictures and reading the interesting and sometimes funny essays. Some of the sites I'll visit (like the Field of Dreams Movie Site), others I think I'll skip (like the courthouse where Joe Jackson couldn't say it wasn't so) but it's fun learning about them all. Good book for a snowy day.



2. This book is a must read for those who love to travel and see various sites that relate to the national pastime.

5 comments about Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South.

1. Excellent editon of this wonderful, classic work. A series of visual and verbal snapshots of the South as a third world country, the South of the 1930's.



2. This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
   The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
   I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
   I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
   Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.
   
   UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.



3. The eloquence of composition surely necessitated infinite use of superlatives and verbs, resulting in a requisite painstaking remostrance to the reader, thus fettering the effusion and disembogulation of the document. In other words, wouldn't it have been better to just leave all of the fluff out of the book and just write as if the reader is someone other than the Queen of England? If you can weed through all of excessive use poems and verbs, it's a halfway decent book



4. Let us Now Praise Famous Men, in all its poetry and prose, reminds me of an epic, like the Hindu Mahabharata or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The lyrical narrative reveals just as much, if not more about Agee, than his subjects. His writing style excludes his subjects as readers.
   
   His prose, which tends to be lofty and cerebral, is also beautiful and brilliant. But, I often wondered, who he was
   writing for? The New Yorker audience? The distance in his observations often left me feeling cold. I imagine these hardworking sharecroppers exhibiting some joy, some evidence of warmth, of hope. But I had difficulty finding it in Agee's voice.
   
   The length of Agee's sentences and paragraphs were long, each containing an entire scene, and I labored through them, hoping sleep would not steal me from a passage I might not finish. It was as though Agee too, was afraid sleep would come and steal him from his mission, and so kept hacking away at each sentence, adding commas and colons and semi-colons, lingering his thoughts across the page.
   
   Whatever level of consciousness Agee existed, I could not hang with him for any more than a couple of sentences, as I would fall off the page and have to find my way back into the scene. Where was I? You get the picture...
   
   Agee also uses parenthesis and colons, often not giving his parenthesis a mate: (This struck me as rather unusual and often, cold and detached--more like a voyeur. Did he fabricate his own method of communication using punctuation or was this being done elsewhere at the time? I felt left out of his thoughts when he did this, like when two people are communicating via sign language and you can't make out a word they're saying. Was he doing this in a way to urge us to "think," to stretch beyond the ordinary conventions and try something on that is foreign and unfamiliar, like his subjects and their hardship?



5. James Agee's painstaking and honest masterpiece is an exercise in empathy. It is a beautiful, tortured writing that speaks to both the deplorable conditions of the Depression-era souther sharecropper and the humanity of trying to present them in a favorable light.
   
   Agee's writing style is at times erratic-- which helps to give the book its character. It is often self-doubting, as Agee calls himself a spy and frequently second guesses his role in accurately reporting the families' lives. Beautifully done and a groundbreaking classic in ethnographic fieldwork-- a must read!

5 comments about Not for Tourists 2008 Guide to New York City (Not for Tourists: New York City).

1. This little book was absolutely invaluable during recent trip to NYC. Very well-organized, great details, great maps. Although we really were tourists, this book saved our bacon on more than one occasion as we were able to find needed items/locations with very little trouble. It's like having a little concierge in your pocket at all times!



2. I was just looking for something different than what this offers. The print is miniscule so you either have to have superman vision or be under 21 to easily read it. (Unless you carry a magnifying glass around NY with you...along with your umbrella, metro card, one dollar bills, cap, water bottle, room key, ID, garmin, cell phone, etc.) It has thousands of listings; mostly of places I wasn't looking for. It IS small and manageable. Something to read on the subway.



3. What I love about this book is the compact size and relatively comprehensive information provided, given the small size. What I don't like is the teeny little font that my middle-aged eyeballs cannot see, but I am perfectly willing to pull out the reading glasses and/or magnifier to compensate.



4. I just moved to the city and have found this book to be a life saver! Because it's so small, I can always keep it in my purse and with the small neighborhood maps, I can keep it in there and read it on the subway without anybody knowing (because really, who has Not for Tourists but tourists??). Like some reviews have said, the index is a littel lacking, but if you use it like I do, you get to know where things are pretty quickly in the handy little black book! I would recomment it to anybody!



5. I carry this book with me always - to know where to find a store, or restaurant or subway stop when I'm in an unfamiliar part of town - priceless.

5 comments about Frommer's Alaska Cruises & Ports of Call 2008 (Frommer's Cruises).

1. This is a very helpful guide for those taking an Alaska cruise; it helps you choose the right cruise for your objectives. It reviews the various landtours available but I particularly like the section in each port-of-call that suggests self-conducted tours with detailed maps, costs, and directions. For example, I will be taking a bus available near the pier to see Mendenhall Glacier (near Juneau); I can set my own departure/return time and save 70% of what the cruise ship company wanted to charge me for taking their (the same!) tour.



2. I bought this book to help me figure out which cruise line to book. It has great detail for that as it describes each line but I wish there was a table that pulls together all that information. I am going to have to make a spread sheet to try to figure out which would be the best price with the amenities I want. This is going to be a big chore as I am not a computer geek. Also, the listing for the hours of daylight for each month is very confusing...I have no clue what 19:30 means and there is no further explanation for that. Other than these criticisms, it's a very helpful planning resource.Frommer's Alaska Cruises & Ports of Call 2008 (Frommer's Cruises)



3. This book wasn't as thorough as I had anticipated. It was only general info that I could obtain through internet "clicking". I had thought that this would be very in-depth on each port. Purchased two Alaska type books at the same time and this one was used only in a cursory manner.



4. This is the best, most informative book on this subject I have found, by far. It is a must if you are considering booking an Alaskan cruise. It rates all the ships and companies, large and small and gives great information on all the ports that are visited by these ships. Certainly a great resource to help you book the type of adventure that fits your style!



5. This is a very well written, organized book for anyone planning to travel to Alaska by cruise ship. It contains very helpful information comparing cruise lines, also. I highly recommend this book.