Content area
Full Text
BRIGHT LIGHT CITY: Las Vegas in Popular Culture. By Larry Gragg. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2013.
As historian Larry Gragg notes in Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Cul- ture, writers view Las Vegas through their preconceptions, describing it as everything from the dank epitome of American capitalism to a democratic space of self-invention. As this suggests, Vegas is more than a city: it is a magic mirror in which Americans have understood our nation and ourselves. Befitting such a place, novelists, filmmak- ers, and journalists have repeatedly used Las Vegas in their work. Gragg examines these hundreds of images to understand its "extraordinary appeal" (5).
Trained as a historian of colonial and Revolutionary America, Gragg brings an appealing passion to his topic. He argues that these multiple representations shape...