Las Vegas Studio


Book Description

"In 1968, American architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour joined together with students from Yale University and took on Las Vegas as a subject of research. The group spent three weeks in libraries, four days in Los Angeles, and ten days in Las Vegas. The research led to the 1972 publication of the seminal architectural theory treatise Learning from Las Vegas. Photography and film were employed equally within as means of argumentation and representation. The original material has since been stored in the archives of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates in Philadelphia. The firm has now opened up its archives and made the photographs available." --Book Jacket.







The Strip


Book Description

The transformations of the Strip—from the fake Wild West to neon signs twenty stories high to “starchitecture”—and how they mirror America itself. The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West, with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs, then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates, followed by replicas of Venetian canals, New York skyscrapers, and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015—ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently, the Strip decided to get classy, with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the “implosion capital of the world” as developers, driven by competition, got rid of the old to make way for the new—offering a non-metaphorical definition of “creative destruction.” In The Strip, Stefan Al examines the many transformations of the Las Vegas Strip, arguing that they mirror transformations in America itself. The Strip is not, as popularly supposed, a display of architectural freaks but representative of architectural trends and a record of social, cultural, and economic change. Al tells two parallel stories. He describes the feverish competition of Las Vegas developers to build the snazziest, most tourist-grabbing casinos and resorts—with a cast of characters including the mobster Bugsy Siegel, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and the would-be political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson. And he views the Strip in a larger social context, showing that it has not only reflected trends but also magnified them and sometimes even initiated them. Generously illustrated with stunning color images throughout, The Strip traces the many metamorphoses of a city that offers a vivid projection of the American dream.




The Vegas Diaries


Book Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author returns with this candid, humorous, and captivating memoir chronicling her journey toward reinvention and self-acceptance. When you've come out the other side of the bizarre, twisted world of the Playboy mansion, where do you land? If you're Holly Madison . . . there's no place like Las Vegas! After making the sudden decision to reclaim her life, Holly broke free from the sheltered, deceptive confines of the mansion (which meant exiting a hit television show) and was determined to start her life over . . . from scratch. Without the security of a job or relationship, she set out to reinvent herself on no one's terms but her own. Deciding to roll the dice and begin again in the glamorous and dreamlike city of Las Vegas, Holly quickly realized that while she may have left her past in the rearview mirror, the labels and stereotypes that came from it weren't so quick to leave her. With a fierce commitment to take charge of her own narrative, Holly dives headfirst into a journey of self-discovery. After a whirlwind stint on Dancing with the Stars, she snags the coveted lead role in the Strip's hottest new burlesque spectacular and lands a reality series spotlighting her new life as a single woman. If her own television show and dream job as a showgirl weren't enough to keep her busy, Holly explores the decadent, exclusive inner-world of Sin City, navigating it's social and dating scene with humor and heart. When it comes to romance, she is met with an eclectic cast of characters, from fame hounds to long distance loves to the occasional celebrity and more than one tabloid mishap. In this reflective, heartwarming memoir, Holly learns that each dating disaster holds an important, and in some cases difficult to face, lesson about herself. The Vegas Diaries is a comedy of errors, set against the glitz and glamour of the dazzling Vegas strip. Through the wild and crazy experiences on one young woman's quest to "have it all," Holly faces her fears, anxieties, and insecurities to discover that her journey to self-sufficiency is also her path to healing. Letting go of trying to prove herself to others, Holly finally gains the courage to confront her past-and in the process finds the life and love she deserves.




The Barber Book


Book Description

A fun and instructive guide to the most popular men's hairstyles of the 20th century The Barber Book is a fun guide to the most popular men's hairstyles of the 20th century, including quirky line drawings to achieve the 'total look' and instructions on how to cut each style. Packed with information this smart handbook uses quirky illustrations and vintage photographs to explore the most popular hairstyles of the 20th century from the undercut and the afro to the classic Madison Avenue look. With a focus on personalities, culture and fashions and cultural events that inspired each look, the book opens with an illustrated introduction exploring the most popular styles of the 1940s, 50s and 60s through archival photography. The book includes a brand new directory of the world's finest barber shops.




Hiking Las Vegas


Book Description

This one-of-a kind guide is devoted to southern Nevada's recreational wonderland. It details 20 hikes on the slopes of Mount Charleston, the highest mountain in southern Nevada and only a 60-minute drive from the Las Vegas Strip. It also describes 40 trails, paths, and routes in BLM's showcase Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area, less than half an hour from Glitter Gulch.




I Am a Monument


Book Description

"Learning from Las Vegas, originally published by the MIT Press in 1972, was one of the most influential and controversial architectural books of its era. Thirty-five years later, it remains a perennial bestseller and a definitive theoretical text. Its authorsاarchitects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenourاfamously used the Las Vegas Strip to argue the virtues of the "ordinary and ugly" above the "heroic and original" qualities of architectural modernism. Learning from Las Vegas not only moved architecture to the center of cultural debates, it changed our ideas about what architecture was and could be. In this provocative rereading of an iconic text, Aron Vinegar argues that Learning from Las Vegas is not only of historical interest but of absolute relevance to current critical debates in architectural and visual culture. Vinegar argues that to read Learning from Las Vegas only as an exemplary postmodernist textاto understand it, for example, as a call for pastiche or as ironic provocationاis to underestimate its deeper critical and ethical meaning, and to miss the underlying dialectic between skepticism and the ordinary, expression and the deadpan, that runs through the text. Vinegar's close attention to the graphic design of Learning from Las Vegas, and his fresh interpretations of now canonical images from the book such as the Duck, the Decorated Shed, and the "recommendation for a monument," make his book unique. Perhaps most revealing is his close analysis of the differences between the first 1972 edition, designed for the MIT Press by Muriel Cooper, and the "revised" edition of 1977, which was radically stripped down and largely redesigned by Denise Scott Brown. The dialogue between the two editions continues with this book, where for the first time the two versions of Learning from Las Vegas are read comparatively."--Publisher's website.




Billboard


Book Description

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.




Billboard


Book Description

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.




Relearning from Las Vegas


Book Description

Evaluates for the first time one of the foundational works in architecture criticism. Immediately on its publication in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, was hailed as a transformative work in the history and theory of architecture, liberating those in architecture who were trying to find a way out of the straitjacket of architectural orthodoxies. Resonating far beyond the professional and institutional boundaries of the field, the book contributed to a thorough rethinking of modernism and was subsequently taken up as an early manifestation and progenitor of postmodernism.