The Strip takes a high-speed transect down one of the world's most important streets as it evolved from a cowpath to the Las Vegas Strip, a tour which yields essential insights into larger American social dynamics. -- William L. Fox, Director, Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art Finally, the book that explains Las Vegas without reducing it to a caricature. Nearly 45 years after Learning from Las Vegas, Stefan Al brings the history of this iconic American landscape up to date. -- Margaret Crawford, Professor of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley To understand America, the cultural critic Neil Postman said in 1985, we have only to look to Las Vegas. This rich, lively historical account of the city's experiments with architectural form show how Las Vegas -- sometimes marvelous, sometimes dystopic, always shape shifting -- has long served as a model for urban design and remains one today as casino capitalism continues its global march. -- Natasha Dow Schull, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University; author of Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas Stefan Al's The Strip is a fascinating examination of the social, cultural, political, and ethical currents shaping the evolution of Las Vegas, from its origins as a lonesome desert railroad outpost into the gambling and entertainment mecca that it is today. Al presents the city in all its complexity -- brimming with extravagance, immorality, ambition, corruption, luck, and loss -- providing the reader with an enlightening look into the history of Las Vegas as a cultural icon, and its phenomenal manifestation as a symbolic reflection of American culture. -- Thom Mayne, FAIA, Distinguished Professor, Architecture and Urban Design, University of California, Los Angeles; Design Director, Morphosis Stefan Al joins such astutely fascinated European Robinson Crusoes as Jean Baudrillard and Reyner Banham, washed ashore on the sands (and in this case The Sands) of American hyperreality. Al sees Vegas not simply as metaphor for what animates and ails us, nor as occasion for learned analytic theatrics (as if the parking lot of Caesars Palace really were aswim with chariots). His is a wonderfully observed account of the architectural development of the Strip at the singular, mesmerizing convergence of postwar car culture, mafia power, A-bomb blasts, suburbanism, libertinism, mass consumption, TV, LSD, and unself-conscious, hyperbolic kitsch -- and its discontents. The Strip is a definitive account of their surreal spawn along an axis at once emblematic and truly weird. -- Michael Sorkin, Distinguished Professor of Architecture, City College of New York; Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio; President, Terreform
Stefan Al, a Dutch architect and urban designer, is Associate Professor of Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Villages in the City and Mall City.
Al's Las Vegas is a story of the American national identity, and once you've bought in, this compulsive read won't lose you a dime.—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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