Vol. 9 No. 5 May 2008
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How To Screw Up A Terrific Book
One of the most important books on Vegas in many years was published last month. Winner Takes All is a very good read despite some shocking sloppiness by its author, Christina Binkley, the Wall Street Journal’s gaming beat writer for almost a decade. Binkley renders some terrific behind-the-scenes reconstructions of three major gaming-industry mergers, but she nearly destroys her own effort with a litany of factual errors.
Yes, I have a list. Binkley calls Restaurant Guy Savoy the most expensive restaurant in the world when it’s not even the most expensive in Vegas. She calls the 1980 MGM Grand blaze a “tragic grease fire” when it was caused by an electrical malfunction. She says the Dunes took 27 seconds to implode when YouTube clips show it took less than 10. She claims the Wynns flew to Sun Valley, Idaho, in an MD-87 jet owned by Mirage Resorts even though a plane that large can’t land at the airport there. She claims Starlight Express at the Hilton “died an ugly death” when it was at the time the longest-running Broadway import in Vegas history. She even misspelled the Mirage performer as “Danny Ganz.”
There are many more. But the one that sticks in my craw the most, and loyal readers of this space know this well, is that she misstated that now-loathsome city tourism slogan as “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.” Someone that familiar with Vegas has got to know the words “Las Vegas” never appear in the official phrase.
